<img align="right" src="http://www.tlpoker.com.br/staff/Raidern/december08/titaliancrew.jpg" style="margin: 5px; border:1px solid black;">The Italian <b>Salvatore Bonavena</b> defeated his fellow countryman Massimo Di Cicco in the heads-up of the EPT Prague to become the first ever Italian EPT champion. Bonavena cashed the top prize of €774,000 . It was a final table with no known poker professionals, except for, maybe, <b>Andrew Chen</b>, a Canadian who final tabled LAPT Costa Rica a few weeks ago. Our own <B>Ludovic "Cutsss" Lacay</b> played this event and was doing well until day 3, as his name was constantly seen among the top in chip counts.
Cutsss had a nice stack when things started to go bad to him. The hand that crippled him was a huge suckout. He lost KK vs JJ (oouch  ) and was left with a smallish stack. Then he moved all in with his last chips holding A8ss and lost to KQhh held by Cirianni, an Italian player who made it to the final table.
Here is how it all started in the final day: Salvatore Bonavena: 1,402,000
Alexiou Konstantinos: 1,382,000
Francesco Cirianni: 807,000
Fredrik Nygard: 666,000
Massimo Di Cicco: 429,000
Nasr El Nasr: 376,000
Raul Mestre: 309,000
Andrew Chen: 309,000
As you can see, three Italians were in the final table, and those three made it to the top five. That was absolutely great for a country that had no EPT champion and just got an Italian version of PokerStars. Cirianni, the guy who eliminated Cutsss, was the first of them to go out, as he was eliminated by Andrew Chen and finished in 5th place. The Greek Alexiou Konstantinos, who was the FT chip leader for quite some time, was sent home by eventual champion Salvatore Bonavena. His pair of threes were beat by Bonavena's Mixed Marriage (KQo) after a King came in the river. He got €199,000 for his 4th place finish. 20-year-old Canadian Andrew Chen was eliminated in 3rd place by Bonavena. Chen was the youngest, but probably the most experienced player in this final table. He earned €257,000 for his run.
And so we got an all-Italian heads-up that lasted for around one hour: Bonavena vs Di Cicco. Bonavena started the HU with a three-to-one chip lead, but Di Cicco managed to fight back and even become chipleader for a while. It wasn't long however before Bonavena set things straight and regained his chiplead, which he kept till the very end. This is when Di Cicco raises preflop holding   and Bonavena calls. Di Cicco sees the board    and shoves all in. Bonavena thinks for a while and calls, turning up   . No Five or Ace in the turn/river to help Di Cicco, and that makes Bonavena the new EPT Prague champion!
Final results:
1. Salvatore Bonavena - €774,000
2. Massimo Di Cicco - €445,000
3. Andrew Alan Chen - €257,000
4. Alexiou Konstantinos - €199,000
5. Francesco Cirianni - €166,000
6. Fredrik Nygard - €130,000
7. Nasr El Nasr - €99,500
8. Raul Mestre - €71,800 |
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Canada. Dec 14 2008 13:23. Posts 10085
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