This year’s edition of the WSOP Europe kicked off on October 8 at Spielbank Berlin Casino and will run through October 24. The €2,200 No-Limit Hold’em Six-Handed or Event #1 in the schedule of the prestigious poker festival took three days to be completed. And it was Greek poker player Makarios Avramidis who topped its field to capture the first-place prize of €105,000 and his first-ever WSOP gold bracelet. In fact, this was Avramidis’ debut WSOP event.
The €2,200 No-Limit Hold’em Six-Handed attracted a field of 197 entries who created a prize pool of €328,180. The top 21 finishers were paid, with payouts starting from €3,520. The prestigious event was entered by some of the world’s most popular and profitable poker pros, with fourteen-time WSOP gold bracelet winner Phil Hellmuth being among those. Other notables who were seen at the tables but were clearly short of luck were Paul Michaelis, who won one gold bracelet this summer, Max Pescatori, who captured two Series gold pieces in June, and Jeff Lisandro, who was there for his career bracelet number seven.
As mentioned above, the €2,200 No-Limit Hold’em Six-Handed lasted three days. Day 3 saw the six remaining players returning to play the official final table and eventually determine the winner. The final table started with Paul Michaelis as the chip leader. The player had a total of 670,000 in chips. Avramidis was fifth in chips at the beginning of the day.
It took almost nine hours of play before the heads-up match was set. Eventually, Avramidis had to face German Frederic Schwarzer in a heads-up battle. It started with the German holding two times more chips than his opponent.
It took a little more than an hour of play for Avramidis to defeat Schwarzer. On what turned out to be the last hand for the evening and the event as a whole, the Greek bet 125,000 and his opponent shoved all-in. Avramidis called an tabled [Ah][6c]. Schwarzer was holding [Kd][9h]. The table ran out [Ad][10c][4h][4s][9d] and the result was more than clear – the German player had to settle for the 2nd place in the tournament and the amount of €64,930.
And here are the other four players who sat at the final table and how much they earned for their efforts:
German Paul Michaelis finished 3rd for a payout of €45,860. UK-based poker pro Stephen Chidwick took 4th place to collect €32,600.
Rick Alvarado from the United States received €23,310 for finishing 5th in the event. Rounding out the official final table, German Marvin Rettenmaier took 6th place to scoop €16,740 of the entire prize pool.
