Michael Martin is the 2008 EPT London Champion(credit: Poker Stars blog)
A grand total of 596 players landed in the United Kingdom for the European Poker Tour’s London tournament. The star-studded event had an £5,200 buy-in and a whopping total prize pool of £3,349,200. Competing under the PokerStars’ professional banner were former EPT London Main Event champ Victoria Coren (2006), German tennis ace and 3-time Wimbledon champion Boris Becker, WSOP Main Event champions Chris Moneymaker, Greg Raymer and Joe Hachem, Betrand “ElKY” Grospellier, Kathy Liebert and many others.
As the final table began, PokerStars qualifier Michael Tureniec of Sweden had the chip lead. Tureniec, a former supermarket cashier who turned poker pro four years ago, qualified for the event online at Poker Stars just three days before the tournament began. Prior to this, he had played in three previous EPT tournaments but never made it to the money in any of them. Tureniec played an impressive game, surviving a tough final table that included a dominant performance by Canadian cash game specialist Eric Liu, 23 to make it all the way to heads-up play against the eventual champ Michael Martin.
Liu, who had only a few chips less than Tureniec when the final table action got underway, was nearly crippled by the Swede when the action was down to four players. However, he didn’t bat an eyelash and took a huge chunk of change off of the American Martin, a fifth place finisher in the EPT Grand Final last April, which set off a chain reaction that may have awakened the monster.
Martin, 24 from Washing Crossing, PA, is a Penn State graduate with a degree in English who used to play hockey. The competitive young man, who had his mom, his gal pal and his friend Brandon Schaefer fly in from the USA to see him perform at the final table, turned on the juice and kicked his game into high gear at this point. He eliminated Liu in fourth position. Then, he took out Polish professional – and Team PokerStars player – Marcin Horecki.
This left him with a significant advantage as heads-up play began. He held nearly 5 million to the 1.205 million chips of Michael Tureniec. Despite one double-up from the former Swedish soldier, Martin stayed strong and won the day, the tournament, the title and £1,000,000.
Here are the final results:
1) Michael Martin - £1,000,000
2) Michael Tureniec - £525,314
3) Marcin Horecki - £303,439
4) Eric Liu - £234,920
5) Philippe D'Auteuil - £195,766
6) Alan Smurfit - £153,351
7) Johannes Strassmann - £120,723
8) Antony Lellouche - £81,569
Qualifiers for the EPT Budapest Event, which takes place at the Las Vegas Casino from October 28 – November 1st in Hungary, are going on at PokerStars now. Click here to be transported there now!