Friday, 29th March 2024 01:06
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Here’s how they will line up for the final table of EPT10 Prague. The winner will take €889,000.

Seat 1: Jorma Nuutinen, 29, Tampere, Finland – 975,000

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Jorma Nuutinen, who is from Tampere, the second biggest city in Finland, considers himself “almost” a professional poker player. He has a job and he says he works there “sometimes” but he earns a good living from poker. His best live cash before this visit to Prague was in the 2009 Midnight Sun Main Event in Helsinki, where he finished third for €66,833, but he has always enjoyed his trips to the Czech capital. Last year he finished tenth in the EPT Prague Main Event, for €53,000, and this year he made the final of the Eureka High Roller, finishing fifth for €45,500. He also won the €1,000 Heads-Up event at EPT9 Barcelona for €22,500. Reaching this year’s final brings his live tournament winnings to more than $400,000.

Seat 2: Stephen Chidwick, 24, Kent, United Kingdom – PokerStars qualifier – 4,935,000

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It has been some week for Stephen Chidwick. Last Thursday he finished third in the Eureka Poker Tour main event, ahead of what proved the tour’s biggest ever field of 1,315 players. Now less than a week later, he is third in chips going to the final of the EPT Main Event. It comes at the end of a good year for Chidwick, during which he reached WSOP final tables in Las Vegas and Paris, clocking up $665,000 in live winnings in 2013 alone. Added to this was his continued online success as “stevie444”. He won a badugi bracelet in the WCOOP last September. His deep run in the Eureka Main Event meant he couldn’t even pick up his bracelet in person as the WCOOP ceremony was held at the EPT Prague Poker Festival party. Despite success around the world and online, with live tournament winnings in excess of $1.5 million, this will be Chidwick’s first EPT final table appearance.

Seat 3: Ole Schemion, 21, Berlin, Germany – PokerStars qualifier – 2,400,000

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Ole Schemion is capping off an incredible 2013 with this EPT Prague final table. The German wunderkind, who plays online under the name “wizowizo”, has racked up more than $1.3m in live tournament cashes already and will add a significant chunk more tomorrow. Schemion started the year with a fourth-place finish in the PCA High Roller for $354,860. Other highlights include winning three side events at the EPT Grand Final for €187,000, as well as cashing in all three major tournaments at EPT Barcelona for another €260,000. Given his consistency it’s perhaps little surprise that Schemion has managed to pip Daniel Negreanu to the GPI Player of the Race. More surprising is that he wasn’t old enough even old enough to play the WSOP in Las Vegas in the summer.

Seat 4: George Sotiropoulos, 23, Rhodes, Greece – PokerStars qualifier – 4,320,000

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Sotiropoulos first started playing poker in home games with friends when he was just 14. He’s now mainly an online player, competing in all the major MTT events on PokerStars. His online results include a Sunday Warm up cash for $148,000. He has played several EPTs and cashed twice – at EPT7 Sanremo, he finished 33rd for €20,000 and at EPT7 Copenhagen he was 43rd for DKr 65,000. He took a break from live events while he was studying Pharmacy at a university in Romania but has now graduated and returned home to the Greek island of Rhodes.

Seat 5: Julian Track, 30, Giessen/Hessen, Germany – PokerStars qualifier – 7,240,000

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The final table chip leader is a mature student at university in Giessen, studying politics, media and sport. He plays online regularly in $1/$2 PLO cash games on PokerStars. He never used to like No Limit that much, but the big prize pools on offer have helped changed his mind. In September he started to play online satellites for live events and won his package for the EPT Prague Main Event as well as another one for the Aussie Millions in February. Despite his success here in Prague, he can’t imagine switching to live poker in future. He said: “There are too many really good players at the tables. And the other thing is that I don’t like when players think about a decision for five or six minutes. Maybe the Aussie Millions will be my last live event.”

Seat 6: Ka Kwan Lau, 27, Spain – PokerStars player – 2,995,000

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Known as kaju85 online, Ka Kwan Lau is most famous for becoming the first Spanish player to hit Supernova Elite status in 2012, accumulating more than one million VIPs in a calendar year. The 27-year-old has a complicated geographical background: he was born in Hong Kong but moved to Spain with his family when he was four. Now, like many Spanish poker professionals, he has relocated to Portugal so that he can continue playing on PokerStars. and currently lives in Faro. (He also has a UK passport). He mainly plays cash games online but has also competed numerous times on the European Poker Tour where his best result to date was 71st at EPT8 Barcelona for €12,000. He came fifth at the Estrellas/UKIPT High Roller event in Marbella in June for €11,500. Guaranteed at least € 84,600 for reaching the final, this is by far his best live result. He is being cheered on by a whole group of Spanish players, still hoping for the first Spanish EPT champion.

Seat 7: Zdravko Duvnjak, 27, Croatia – PokerStars player – 1,225,000

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Zdravko Duvnjak was born in Croatia, emigated to The Netherlands with his parents in 1993 and then moved back to Zagreb a year ago. He’s been playing poker for almost six years, mainly in cash games – both live and online. He decided to come to Prague at the very last minute; his last big live event was the Season 3 Eureka tourney in Dubrovnik, Croatia. He’s being supported here in Prague by friends from all over Europe including Sweden, Bulgaria, Croatia and The Netherlands.

Seat 8: Max Silver, 23, London, UK – 5,935,000

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Max Silver cut his teeth on the PokerStars UK and Ireland Poker Tour (UKIPT) where his record is quite extraordinary: one Main Event title, four final tables, and a first and second in High Rollers. Silver has stepped up successfully on to the bigger stage, too; he’s made two final WSOPE final tables and cashed in this year’s PCA High Roller. He is a former employee of Full Tilt Poker and now lives in Dublin with his fiancée. The couple are getting married next September. His winnings here will take Silver’s career cashes through the million-dollar mark.

Coverage of the final table will begin at 1pm CET.

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