The EPT Season 12 Barcelona has its Main Event champion. His name is John Juanda and he won the amount of €1,022,593 for his triumph last night. With live tournament winnings of more than $17 million, the player is definitely one of the most profitable and successful poker professionals of our time.
Barcelona is traditionally the first stop in the schedule of one of the world’s biggest and most popular poker festivals. And it would not be an exaggeration to say that the city has always provided both players and fans of the game with great excitement.
This year’s €5,300 Barcelona Main Event attracted a record-breaking field of 1,694 players, thus becoming the largest ever event in the history of the EPT. A prize pool of €8,215,900 was created and the top 247 finishers got their share of the money. The payouts started from €8,800.
Day 6 of the €5,300 Main Event was the last one on its schedule. It saw nine players returning to play the final table. The day started with Ukrainian Denys Shafikov as the chip leader with 17,515,000. He was followed by Steve Warburton from the UK with 7,180,000 and Andreas Samuelsson from Sweden with 7,005,000.
Play resumed from Level 32 and it took 39 hands before the first finalist left the table. It was Russian player Victor Bogdanov who took 9th place for a payout of €104,000. Mario Sanchez from Spain was the next to go. The player was busted in 8th place by Frederik Jensen from Denmark on Hand #52. Sanchez added a total of €137,080 to his poker bankroll.
Lebanese player Amir Touma was eliminated on the very next hand. His 7th place in the tournament secured him with €194,100. Samuelsson was the next to go. He was busted on Hand #59 by Warburton His payout amounted to €253,900.
The next elimination came in Level 33. German player Rainer Kempe took 5th place in the tournament to collect €320,400 of the entire prize pool.
It took a bit more time before another player was seen leaving the final table. In Level 35, Day 5 chip leader Shafikov was busted to 4th place. He received the amount of €405,100. The three remaining players then struck a three-way deal. Given their stacks, Jensen was to receive €810,294, Juanda was to be paid €922,593, and Warburton was to collect a payout of €941,613. The remaining €100,000 were for the tournament champion.
It was in Level 37 when Jensen was eliminated in 3rd place by Juanda. Thus, the heads-up started with the eventual winner as the chip leader. Juanda held almost 4 times more chips than his opponent.
It took about 20 hands before the name of the champion was clear. Hand #223 turned out to be the last one in play. Juanda bet 1.2 million pre-flop and Warburton raised to 2.6 million. Eventually, Juanda four-bet to 5.1 million. Warburton moved all in and Juanda called instantly.
The British player tabled [8s][8h] against Juanda’s [Qs][Qd]. The table ran out [10c][Jd][2c][2d][9h] and the name of the champion was announced.
Juanda received the amount of €1,022,593 and the tournament trophy and Warburton had to content himself with the runner-up finish. After last night’s victory, Juanda took 9th place in the all-time money list with tournament earnings of more than $17 million. In addition, the player holds 5 WSOP gold bracelets. He collected one of those in 2008 when he won the WSOP Europe £10,000 Main Event.
