Zimnan Ziyard wins EPT Loutraki for €347,000
Monday, 21 November 2011
The first PokerStars European Poker Tour stop in Greece was a resounding success with a total field of 336 players taking part. There's yet more British success to report with Zimnan Ziyard taking the €347,000 first prize.
It took two opening flights to whittle the field down to a manageable 100 before two further days gave us an eight-handed final table. Despite deep runs from Rupert Elder, Toni Judet and Jude Ainsworth it was an unknown and local final table of eight that we were left with. All eight were guaranteed €27,000 and it was Day 1b chip leader Mario Puccini who collected that payout.
The first few final table eliminations were rapid fire but it took six hours for the final three players to become two. Zimnan Ziyard began heads up play against Germany's Hauke Heseding with a chip deficit of nearly 3-1 but quickly doubled to get back in the action and soon reclaimed the lead. The one-on-one match was closely fought to but after two hours of heads up play the the 25-year-old from Eastbourne sealed the title after making a great call of Hedeing's shove with Ac7d on a 6c3c2c board. The German was drawing thin with Jh5c and missed all his outs to leave the UK celebrating another excellent EPT performance.
“It was a very tough day. I had an easy run the first few days but this was totally different.” said Ziyard, “When we were three-handed, I thought I had it but then I started wondering if I would even get second! It was definitely the most challenging table I've ever played.”
The prize pool and payouts were as follows:
1 - Zimnan Ziyard, United Kingdom, €347,000
2 - Hauke Heseding, Germany, €221,800
3 - Ioannis "John" Taramas, €134,400
4 - Florian Schleps, €100,800
5 - Pierre Mothes, Germany, €67,200
6 - Andras Kovacs, Hungary, €53,700
7 - Charalampos Kapernopoulos, Greece, €40,300
8 - Mario Puccini, Germany, €27,000
Image courtesy of Neil Stoddart at PokerStars.
The next stop for EPT Season 8 is the €5,300 EPT Prague event in the capital of the Czech Republic, running from December 5-10, 2011 at Golden Prague Poker at the Hilton Prague Hotel. Satellites are running now on PokerStars.