The European Poker Tour (EPT) visited the French capital for the first time last week and managed to break records and set a good tone for the new PokerStars EPT season.
While things started a bit shaky in the early days of the festival, with organizers experiencing some troubles with scheduling and player registrations, PokerStars quickly turned things around, making the EPT Paris Main Event the sixth-biggest ever in the history of the Tour.
By the time all was said and done, Romanian online pro Razvan Belea came out on top of a field of 1606 players, eventually edging out Sweden’s Peter Jorgne and winning well over €1,000,000 in the process.
Not only was this the biggest live tournament cash for the Romanian, but the PokerStars qualifier managed to win more than the sum of his entire online tournament cashes in a single fell swoop, changing his career as a poker player forever.
The inaugural EPT Paris at the Hyatt Regency Paris Etoile brought quite a few interesting stories. Still, Belea’s domination over the Main Event was the biggest one by a long stretch, and the massive first-place prize he got to take home reflected the magnitude of the success.
Belea Dominates the Main Event & Final Table
Tournament poker is notoriously swingy, and many eventual tournament winners only get there after a shaky ride that includes being at risk of busting on multiple occasions throughout an event.
Razvan Belea’s first major live poker title came differently, though, as one of the best Romanian players cruised to victory, dominating the chip leaderboard over Days 4 and 5 and entering the final table as the tournament chip leader.
The final day of action saw only five players come back to play, with Estonian Henri Kasper, whose 11 big blinds were not enough to make a recovery, quickly headed for the rail.
Belea’s chip stack kept growing steadily as he picked up one pot after another and expertly increased the distance between himself and the rest of the field.
Britain’s Brian Delaney Jr. was the next to go, as his top pair could not hold up against the eventual champion’s bottom pair and flush draw, with the river card bringing in the flush for the Romanian.
The last French player still in the field was Fabrice Bigot Castagnet, who recently took down a WPT Prime event in Paris for €177,000. His third-place finish meant he was going home with the biggest payout of his life, worth over €500k, and left Belea and Jorgne to battle it out for the title.
The Romanian entered heads-up play with a significant chip lead that was enough to have him cruise to victory without any swings or dramatic moments.
The Swede eventually busted on a bluff as he tried to pick up a pot after missing his draw, but Belea’s turned straight was way too strong of a hand to give up on the river.
While French players fought very well on home soil, the Main Event trophy will be traveling with Belea to Romania, while locals will have to wait for the next EPT Paris stop to bring it back home.
Brewer and Chidwick Dominate High-Rollers
Of course, the EPT Paris Main Event was not the only exciting tournament to be played in the French capital throughout the festival, as high-rollers fought it out in some of the biggest buy-in events in Europe.
A young American pro, Chris Brewer, dominated the festival’s early days, taking down the €25k and €50k High-Roller events on February 17 and 19 and banking over €1.3 million for his double victory.
However, British high-stakes legend Stephen Chidwick would not be outdone, as he also managed to book a double High-Roller win, along with a second-place finish in one of the €25k events, and bagged over €800k for his troubles.
Several other players, including Teun Mulder, Andre Marques, and Diogo Coelho, also lifted High-Roller trophies in one of the most active weeks for high-stakes players on European soil this year.
The famous Tour continues in April with a Monte Carlo stop before traveling to Barcelona, Cyprus, and Prague later in the years, and satellites for future EPT events are already running at PokerStars, where the next Razvan Belea may be waiting for their opportunity to win an EPT package and change their life forever.
