€5,300 EPT Main Event
Jour 7 a débuté
2023 PokerStars EPT Barcelona
€5,300 EPT Main Event
Jours 7
Event Info
Résultats
Event Info
Info Niveau
Info Joueurs - Jour 7
2023 PokerStars EPT Barcelona
Buy-in
€5,300
Prize Pool
€10,282,000
Entrants
2,120
Niveau
35
Blinds
200,000 / 400,000
Ante
400,000
Joueurs Survivants
1
Andre Akkari Among Remaining Six Chasing a Trophy at the Final Table of EPT Barcelona
The gold-plated PokerStars European Poker Tour (EPT) Barcelona Main Event trophy has been standing sentinel in its case for the past week, just waiting for one lucky player to emerge from among a field of 2,120 and hoist it in the air. That wait will finally come to an end today when the final table resumes at 12:30 p.m. local time.
Simon Wiciak is the player everyone is hoping to catch at the final table. The 30-year-old Frenchman has dominated the tournament for the better part of three days and holds the chip lead with 22,875,000. Wiciak is a former professional soccer player and engineer who only took up live tournaments over the past year; all of his live cashes have come since April 2022. With just over $100,000 in earnings, he’s already guaranteed to triple that total but will be looking for much more today.
Final Table Chip Counts
| Place | Player | Country | Chip Count | Big Blinds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Simon Wiciak | France | 22,875,000 | 92 |
| 2 | Carl Shaw | United Kingdom | 17,400,000 | 70 |
| 3 | Santiago Plante | Canada | 7,500,000 | 30 |
| 4 | Joao Sydenstricker | Brazil | 6,150,000 | 25 |
| 5 | Ezequiel Waigel | Argentina | 5,150,000 | 21 |
| 6 | Andre Akkari | Brazil | 4,500,000 | 18 |
Carl Shaw follows behind him in second place with 17,400,000. The Englishman is no stranger to navigating through massive tournament fields. He made a deep run in the 2019 WSOP Main Event, then followed that up by winning a WSOP bracelet a few days later. He also made the final table of the Irish Open back in April. Shaw was on the right side of the biggest pot of the tournament yesterday to briefly take the chip lead away from Wiciak as the two players hold more than 63 percent of the total chips in play between them.
The four players playing catch up at the final table are led by Canadian Santiago Plante. The 27-year-old from Montreal was already enjoying an incredible trip to Barcelona before entering the Main Event. He had cashed in each of the three events he played in, including a final table in a €2,100 No-Limit Hold’em event and 45th place in the record-breaking Estrellas Poker Tour Main Event. He’s now navigated his way through this field and wound up at another final table in third place with 7,500,000.
Joao Sydenstricker is one of two Brazilians remaining in the field and will be supported by a raucous rail today. He comes into the final table in fourth place with 6,150,000. He cashed in the ESPT but otherwise had no live cashes outside his native Brazil before coming to Barcelona. His best results have come online, where, playing under the name “sydens,” he won the Sunday Million in June for $86,099.
Ezequiel Waigel of Argentina has 5,150,000 to begin the day and is the one player at the final table who can’t eclipse his largest career cash even with the €1,488,000 top prize. Known as “eze8888” online, he won the WCOOP Main Event in 2018 for more than $1,500,000. He only came to Barcelona after qualifying for the ESPT online, then earned his seat in the Main Event in a live qualifier. Waigel’s previous best EPT result was 32nd in Prague in 2022.
Then there is the Brazilian legend and Team PokerStars Ambassador Andre Akkari, who once again finds himself at the bottom of the leaderboard for the third straight day with 4,500,000. Akkari has been nursing a short stack for days, consistently finding ways to stay alive and double up just when his chances appeared the most bleak. He’s been cashing in EPT events for more than 15 years and first cashed at EPT Barcelona in 2011. He’s one spot away from matching his fifth-place finish from EPT Barcelona in 2017 but will have to work some magic once again. Akkari can take some optimism from last year’s final table, where Giuliano Bendinelli found himself in an even more dire situation, down to just one big blind, but battled back to take the trophy.
Final Table payouts
| Place | Player | Country | Prize |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | €1,488,000 | ||
| 2 | €931,250 | ||
| 3 | €664,750 | ||
| 4 | €511,300 | ||
| 5 | €393,300 | ||
| 6 | €302,500 | ||
| 7 | Curtis Knight | Canada | €232,700 |
| 8 | Robin Ylitalo | Sweden | €179,000 |
The remaining six players will come back with 65 minutes remaining on Level 33, with blinds of 125,000-250,000 and a 250,000 big blind ante. The final table will be streamed on a 30-minute delay by PokerStars TV on YouTube and Twitch. They are all guaranteed at least €302,500, but by the end of the day one player will take home €1,488,000 and the right to forever be known as an EPT champion.
The trophy has been waiting. The day has finally arrived. A new EPT Barcelona champion will be crowned today, and Pokernews will be providing all the updates as the six survivors from a once-massive field battle throughout the night until only one is left standing.
Seat 1: Santiago Plante, 27, Canada (7,500,000)
It’s almost a prerequisite to be a hockey fan when you’re from Montreal, but Santiago Plante admits he only really follows the Canadiens when they make the playoffs. Unlike the hometown team, he has been on a tremendous run – especially here at EPT Barcelona, where he’s turned each of his four tournament entries into an ITM result.
Plante said it was perhaps a little surprising to him. He felt he came to Barcelona slightly unprepared, having just taken a break from poker. Instead of sharpening his skills, he'd been recharging batteries, mostly at music festivals.
The break was well deserved after an exhausting summer grind in Las Vegas, where he cashed in 16 tournaments and made three final tables. Now he’s picked up where he left off, guaranteed to collect the biggest prize of his career.
“Making the televised EPT final table is a fanboy’s dream,” Plante said. He revealed that the EPT streams played an important role in sparking his passion for the game. “This is the biggest tournament outside the United States, and the last 10 days here have been a lot of fun,” he added.
Seat 2: Carl Shaw, 31, United Kingdom (17,400,000)
It wasn’t even a decade ago that Carl Shaw was making the 40-minute drive from his home in Telford to the casinos of Birmingham to play a £20 buy-in tournament. In the years since he’s become a tournament regular and consistent performer in Europe and beyond, racking up almost $1.3 million in tournament cashes prior to this event.
This is Shaw’s first Main Event final table and deepest run on the EPT, but he’s playing like a man who is right at home. Shaw has had the chip lead multiple times throughout this tournament and has hovered near the top of the counts since a surge on Day 3.
His comfort at the table is all down to experience in high-pressure moments. It was 2019 when Shaw enjoyed breakout success, first putting up a deep run in the World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event, then immediately following it up by winning a bracelet in a $5K no-limit hold’em event for $606,562, proving he knows how to navigate a prestigious final table.
Railed by the EPT London champion Ian Hamilton, Shaw will more than double his best score with victory here in Barcelona.
Seat 3: Simon Wiciak, 30, France (22,875,000)
An accomplished online tournament pro, Simon Wiciak switched his focus to the live game a little more than a year ago and has demonstrated in a dominant display at EPT Barcelona that he has the skills in this environment too. He took over the chip lead on Day 4, kept it throughout Day 5 and heads into the final leading the way with six remaining.
Wiciak was a promising student at high school in his native La Rochelle, France, with particular specialization in maths. However, he was also a talented footballer and joined a specialist sport-studies college, where regular academic lessons complement at least 10 hours of football training per week. He progressed to be captain of the U-19 team and might have gone further, but opted instead to refocus on his studies, specializing now in engineering.
He had learned how to play poker with the football team, betting sticks of chewing gum in various changing rooms. But it was while he was employed in his first engineering job, for an industrial gases company Air Liquide, that he really found an appetite for the game. He soon found that he was making more money playing poker than in his day job and gave the life of the online pro a go.
He lived in Mauritius and Hungary as he played, becoming friends with many of the leading lights of French poker, including EPT final tablists Antoine Saout and Adrien Allain as well as former champ Jean Montury. After a successful summer at the WSOP this year, he is now committed to live poker and seems set to burnish his reputation after this performance in Barcelona.
Seat 4: Joao Sydenstricker, 37, Brazil (5,150,000)
João Sydenstricker started playing poker with friends for peanuts when he was only 12 years old, usually 5-card draw. In 2009, he discovered hold'em – and that's when he realised he could make a living from the game he used to play just for fun.
Sydenstricker’s best results have come in recent years, including a spectacular victory in the Sunday Million on PokerStars – well known as one of the toughest online tournaments.
He doesn't have too many hobbies apart from poker, but he is also a poker coach as well as player, which takes up much of his time. He says used to like football but couldn’t handle his nerves during big games, so now he enjoys walking with his dogs.
He says that it is incredible to be at an EPT final table – particularly alongside Andre Akkari, who is one of his idols. Having only really started playing live poker recently, he says it is something he has not even dreamed of yet.
Seat 5: Andre Akkari, 48, Brazil (4,500,000)
The leading light of Brazilian poker for more than a decade, Andre Akkari has been pivotal in the explosion in popularity of poker in his home country and continues to show that he can mix it with the best. There are now numerous Brazilians in the very top echelons of the world game, and all owe a debt of gratitude to the PokerStars Ambassador from Sao Paulo. He is a well-known figure in the Brazilian media, advocating for poker, and has mentored countless players as they build their careers.
Akkari himself continues to be a tremendous talent at the tables, with a particular affinity for Barcelona. He recorded his first ever tournament cash on European soil here in 2006, and also picked up his best finish at a PokerStars event in this room in 2017, when he finished fifth in what was then the PokerStars Championship. He has cashed in at least one EPT tournament in Barcelona every year for the past 10 years (Covid cancellations notwithstanding).
The latter stages of this EPT Main Event have showcased Akkari’s incredible survival skills. He had the shortest stack of all 32 players when Day 4 ended and was 16th of 16 at the end of Day 5. But Akkari is still there in the final six, with a very good chance of surpassing the payday that came with his World Series bracelet in 2011. Back then, he won $675,117 for victory in a $1,500 event.
Seat 6: Ezequiel Waigel, 31, Argentina (6,150,000)
A friend introduced Ezequiel Waigel to poker in 2009, when he was only 18 years old. In the 14 years since, he has made his way steadily into the top 10 on the Argentina money list, closing in on $2 million in live earnings.
Waigel credits the increased availability of online poker material as the catalyst for his surge through the ranks. He studied patiently to improve his game. He is also a firm advocate for online satellites, and qualified for the Estrellas Main Event at PokerStars, which brought him and a group of friends to Barcelona.
He didn’t cash in the record-breaking Estrellas event but won a seat to the EPT Main Event in a live qualifier. Now in the last six, Waigel is guaranteed to claim his third six-figure score – and maybe more, should he win.
Uniquely among the players still left, Waigel already knows what it feels like to bank a million-dollar score. As “eze88888” online, he won the WCOOP Main Event on PokerStars in 2018, outlasting more than 5,000 runners.
Niveau: 33
Blinds: 125,000/250,000
Ante: 250,000
Shuffle Up and Deal
Niveau 33
: Blinds 125,000/250,000, 250,000 ante
The remaining six players have done their interviews, posed for their group photos, and stacked up their chips as the final table is now underway.