EPT Deauville Crowned the First Ever Winner From Greece

Sotirios Koutoupas, the first ever Greek winner of an EPT event was crowned in Deauville, last week.

The EPT Deauville poker tournament hosted in full compliance with French gambling laws is now over. The prestigious poker competition has crowned the first ever Greek winner – Sotirios Koutoupas. The Greek pro has already come very close to winning an EPT event – he was second in last year’s EPT Prague Main Event.

This time, in one of the most renowned French poker rooms, the Greek poker enthusiast went one step further and survived a tough final table. The final nine included such prominent players as Eugene Katchalov, Eli Heath, Harry Law, and Oliver Price.

EPT Deauville final table

Eugene Katchalov, the renowned Ukrainian poker pro, has come very close to securing a Triple Crown – a title given out to the winner of the European Poker Tour, the World Poker Tour and World Series of Poker events. Katchalov was denied by the brilliant play of Koutoupas.

Later, Katchalov had the following comments: “At this point in my career I’m obviously looking for first places and the Triple Crown is always in the back of mind, but at the same time I realise how hard it is to win a tournament. I think I was a lot more upset in Barcelona. I think I’ve grown up and don’t put so much pressure on myself to win. I’m satisfied with second place. I’ve got a lot of money to soothe my wounds!”

The final table play went all the way to heads up between Koutoupas and Katchalov. The Greek finally prevailed in a “coin flip” after flopping trips with his A3 to beat the AK in Katchalov’s hand.

The final table had two players securing their place in the tournament qualifying at an online poker site: Rustem Muratov of Russia, and Carlo De Benedittis of Italy. This confirms that you don’t have to be a big pro to place in the cash at a major live-poker event.

Here’s how Koutoupas, taking home EUR 614,000, commented his win: “It was my time now, it was my time to win. I was very lucky today in some situations but that’s poker. Everything went well for me. After Prague, I had some more to do.”

Take a look at the final table result of the EPT Deauville:

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The next stop for the European Poker Tour is the EPT Vienna festival, hosted between March 19 and 29. Qualifiers and satellites are already running at PokerStars.