Poker news

A 20-year-old economics student has won the biggest major poker tournament ever held in Europe. Constant Rijkenberg, from Amsterdam, Holland, won €1,508,000 after beating 1,177 players at the PokerStars.com EPT San Remo event in Italy. The record field created a total prize pool of €5,713,300.

The young Dutchman saw off some of the best players in the world during the five-day €5,300 buy-in event including three world champions and scores of top professionals. The final hand came after six hours of play when the Finnish player Kalle Niemi, a PokerStars qualifier, went all-in with ace-ten on a ten-high board and was instantly called by Rijkenberg with pocket aces.

Rijkenberg said: “I really don’t know what to feel right now. My first dream was to play an EPT, my second to play on the featured TV table, my third was to make the final table and fourth dream was to win. It’s the biggest dream you can have apart from the WSOP main event - and I’m too young to play that right now.”

Rijkenberg, as champion, also wins a seat at the €10,000 EPT Grand Final to be held in Monte Carlo next week. The tournament, which is the penultimate event on season six of the EPT, attracted players from 47 countries with Italians accounting for around a third of the field. However only one Italian made the final table, Danilo D'Ettoris, who came eighth for €114,000. There were 237 players who won their seats online with PokerStars.

The Croatian player Dragan Galic, who came fifth for €314,000, also broke records. Not only did he become the first player to hold the overnight chip lead every night during the tournament, he was also the first Croatian ever to cash at an EPT main event. Another record-breaker at the tournament was the Portuguese player Joao Barbosa, winner of EPT Warsaw, who celebrated his seventh cash this season.

The ShootingStar Benjamin Kang was the last PokerStars-sponsored player in the tournament, coming 29th for € 21,700. The Team PokerStars Pro Marcin Horecki also cashed, in 73rd place for €10,300, and the Team PokerStars Pro Alex Kravchenko was the first person to bust in the money, coming 112th for €5,800.

The tournament featured a wealth of international stars, including the Team PokerStars Pros Peter Eastgate, who is the current world champion, and former World Series winners Greg Raymer and Tom McEvoy as well as Team PokerStars Pros Noah Boeken, Johnny Lodden, Hevad Khan, William Thorson, Dario Minieri, Isabelle Mercier, Luca Pagano and Katja Thater. Friend of PokerStars Bill Chen also played. The French rap star Bruno “Kool Shen” Lopes, who was sponsored by PokerStars, cashed in 76th place for €10,300.

A special tournament was held at EPT San Remo to raise funds for the Abruzzo earthquake appeal. The winner of the €1,200 event was an Italian who was directly affected by the disaster and is currently living out of his car. Aldo Antonacci, 50, from Penne in the Abruzzo region of Italy, won €40,000 after outlasting a field of 140. The tournament was organised by Luca Pagano's PokerforLife.it charity and raised €70,000 for the appeal with €200 of the buy-in donated and a further €300 per player donated by PokerStars.