You probably know by now that this is the largest ever PokerStars Festival. With 78 events in total across 11 days events there’s plenty of action outside of the Main Events and High Rollers. Three events that started on Saturday wrapped up late last night and one event that began today has already finished. The participants in those events can’t have known it at the time but it turns out that if your name didn’t begin with the letter ‘B’ then you didn’t stand a chance of winning.
The most significant of the quartet of events to conclude was the FPS Monaco Cup. This €330 re-entry event, which began on Wednesday, attracted a total of 747 runners. They were fighting it out for a prize pool of €217,377 which would be split 111 ways – not equally of course. The man who took the lion’s share of the spoils was Remy Bonnet, he collected €25,220 as part of a three-way chop. In fact Daniele Vesco and Olivier Ezan, who finished second and third respectively, both collected €29,000 apiece. It was Bonnet’s first recorded live cash and one he’ll be sure to remember. Others who cashed in that event include Maison du Bluff contestant Aurelie Quelain who finished eighth for €3,947, French veteran Paul Testud, EPT Prague champion Salvatore Bonavena and Dan Heimiller all troubled the scoreboard.
The €300 price point is proving popular as 327 players stumped up that amount for a turbo event that began at 9pm on Saturday night. They weren’t far off creating a six-figure prize pool (€95,157 was the final total) and when the dust settled on some fast paced poker Canadian player Hani Bahna was the one posing for the winners photos.
He collected €17,330 after doing a deal heads-up with eventual runner-up Yohann Gibert. The Frenchman picked up €13,000 for his troubles. Other high placed finishers included EPT regular Raffaele Sorrentino (3rd, €8,830), Georges Yazbeck (5th, €5,632) and Erwann Pecheux (8th, €2,330). Pecheux made it two cashes in one day as he’d earlier finished 22nd in the Monaco Cup.
Also taking place on Saturday was the Woman’s event. 65 ladies – and luckily no men – all put up €220. The bubble took some time to burst but it was Janice Combes – mother of Charlie Combes who would be the last to leave empty handed. It was perhaps the most experienced player in the field who would take victory with Isabel Baltazar taking top honours and €3,690. She has accrued more than $450,000 in live tournament winnings, was one of the finalists at EPT Barcelona in Season 8, finishing in eighth place for €73,000. Norway’s Karin Bruteig, who was here in Monaco after qualifying online to compete in one of the three Shark Cage TV show heats, finished eighth for €480.
One event that started today has already finished with Mikhail Bernovskii winning the junior’s event. Players had to be under the age of 21 to play and the Russian defeated a field of eight to win €775, Atanas Malinov finished second (€467) and Mattia Nacleri was third (€330).
Last but not least PokerStars did their bit for charity last night and raised €10,000 for the Pink Ribbon Monaco breast cancer awareness charity through the Poker for Pink tournament. French player Sylvian Arguelle took down the €200 buy-in event after beating Rebecca McAdam heads-up. As well as money some fantastic prizes were handed out to the winners. Those who took part included: Sean Astin, Team PokerStars members Liv Boeree, Vanessa Selbst, Christophe and Matti De Meulder, Fatima Moreira de Melo, Leo Margets, Jake Cody, Theo Jorgensen and Jennifer Shahade as well as EPT President Edgar Stuchly.
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