May 7 2011

ElkY Picks Up Another High Roller Title at EPT Madrid

written by: Jennifer under Poker Comments: Comments Off

The seventh season of the European Poker Tour reached its final destination, as the EPT Grand Final got underway at the Casino Gran Madrid in Spain. Action kicked off with the much-anticipated High Roller tournament, which required a €25,000 buy-in from interested players.

There were 58 players who bought in, which created a prize pool of €1,435,500 from which the top eight players were to be paid. After the first day of play, only 36 of the players remained, and the chip leader of them all was Team PokerStars Pro Viktor “Isildur1” Blom with 225,800. Second place was Benny Spindler with 208,269 chips. Others still alive toward the top of the leaderboard included Andrew Lichtenberger, Galen Hall, Bryn Kenney, Johnny Lodden, and Roberto Romanello.

Day 2 worked the field to a table of only eight players, as the money and final table bubbles burst when Alexander Luber exited in ninth place. That left Galen Hall in the lead with 798K chips, followed by Benny Spindler with 710K, and Peter Jetten was on the 63K short stack.

May 7 saw the final table get underway. Hall started strong by eliminating Jetten, but a quick downfall led to Spindler busting Hall in seventh place. Juha Helppi took out Alex Repik, and Spindler was back in action to send Vanessa Rousso out in fifth and David Sands in fourth. Bertrand Grospellier stepped in to eliminate Helppi in third, and heads-up began with Spindler holding 2 million chips to the 700K of Grospellier. But Grospellier doubled through his opponent and took the lead. The last hand happened on a 2c-9c-4d-Jc-9s board, at which time Grospellier moved all-in with 9h-4h for the full house, and Spindler called (and lost) with Ks-9d and trip nines. Spindler had to settle for second place, and Grospellier added another High Roller title to his list of accomplishments.

1st place: Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier (€525,000)
2nd place: Benny Spindler (€316,000)
3rd place: Juha Helppi (€185,000)
4th place: David Sands (€135,000)
5th place: Vanessa Rousso (€100,000)
6th place: Alex Repik (€72,000)
7th place: Galen Hall (€57,500)
8th place: Peter Jetten (€45,000)

Thanks to PokerStars Blog for the live updates and credit to Neil Stoddart for the photo.

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