Germany’s Chris Nguyen bagged the €100k SHR at EPT Monte Carlo last night to pick up a monster €2,022,000 top prize, just months after switching from cash games to tournaments.
The 25-year-old Frankfurt pro was among 53 original entries to the €100k buy-in SHR, and when 21 re-entries boosted the prizepool to €7,179,480 we had a record-breaking event on our hands.
With 11 spots paid, someone was going to be the last one to miss out on a €179,500 min. cash and that was to be Russia’s Nikita Kuznetsov. By the time day 2 ended, the likes of highstakes crushers Jason Koon, Ben Tollerene and Artur Martirosian had also departed, leaving us with our final table of six.
The Final Six
It was another German leading the chip counts, Leon Sturm, with Seth Davies bringing up the rear.
It was Belarus’ Mikita Badziakouski who would fall first though, his stack going to Sturm when he ran 6♠ 7♠ into aces blind-on-blind.
Despite this, it wasn’t to be Sturm’s day, eventually racing for his tournament life with a resurgent Seth Davies…
Davies: 6♦ 6♥
Sturm: A♦ J♥
Flop: Q♦ 9♠ 3♥
Turn: 3♠
River: 10♣
A 5th spot worth €551,380 for Sturm and the chip lead for Davies, who was soon followed to the cashier’s cage by Orpen Kisacikoglu.
“Orp the Turk” as he is affectionately known got almost all of his stack in with A♥ 4♥ only to find himself up against 8♦ 8♥ when his final chips were forced in on a flop of K♣ 2♣ 10♠
The board ran out 3♥ 2♥ and it was a €716,900 4th place finish for Kisacikoglu.
Deal or No Deal?
Down to three — Sturm (8.6m), Davies (5.3m) and Enrico Camosci (4.5m) — the players crunched some numbers but couldn’t find common ground.
“Let’s play. I want to play,” said Sturm and that was that. And play they did.
It would take a cooler to finally get Davies out of the equation…
Camosci: 8♣ 7♥
Davies: A♦ 7♦
Flop: 8♦ 7♣ K♣
Turn: 7♠
River: J♥
Brutal, but Davies pocketed €931,900 to soften the blow.
Camosci had a 5:4 lead but that was overturned by the break and soon extended. Although he fought hard there was little he could do against the run of the cards and Nguyen finished things off cleanly.
Camosci: 8♣ 8♠
Nguyen: J♣ 3♥
All-in pre-flop, Camosci could only watch on as Nguyen rivered the winner…
Board: 6♠ 2♠ 4♣ :xx: 5♠
“Smile, you just won a €100K,” said a watching Jason Koon. “The only problem is you gotta take a photo with that shitty hand.”
Final results
| 1 | Chris Nguyen | Germany | €2,022,000 |
| 2 | Enrico Camosci | Italy | €1,304,500 |
| 3 | Seth Davies | USA | €931,900 |
| 4 | Orpen Kisacikoglu | Turkey | €716,900 |
| 5 | Leon Sturm | Germany | €551,380 |
| 6 | Mikita Badziakouski | Belarus | €438,300 |
| 7 | Artur Martirosian | Russia | €350,700 |
| 8 | Klemens Roiter | Austria | €280,400 |
| 9 | Jason Koon | USA | €224,400 |
| 10 | Ben Tollerene | USA | €179,500 |
| 11 | Paulius Plausinaitis | Lithuania | €179,500 |
“It’s just fun for me, I think,” Nguyen said of his first major tournament win. “I enjoy it. It’s definitely the most fun to play against strong players.”
On turning down the deal (which would have secured him €1.5million), he explained: “I kind of felt that even though it was three-handed, there was so much heads up afterwards, I just wanted to play.”
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