Background Check
A little bit of background about some of the players still in the field:
Alex Goulder, 25
Grew up near Cambridge, former poker dealer at Dusk Till Dawn in Nottingham and also the WSOP-E in London.
Mainly live cash game player but a string of live results. Talented musician, spent much of his childhood studying music and playing in orchestras. Studied Economics at Nottingham University but after a break and return, dropped out altogether to play poker.
Sotirios Koutoupas, 31, Thessaloniki, Greece
Sotirios Koutoupas, 31, already has nearly $750,000 in lifetime tournament winnings – a large chunk of which he earned with his runner-up finish to Ramzi Jelassi at EPT Prague for € 510,000 in Season 9. Yesterday, Koutoupas told the PokerStars blog: “"I want to be the first Greek player who wins the EPT. I'll do my best.” Koutoupas, currently ranked third on the Greece all time money list, is one of a troop of Greek players who are clocking up big cashes on the tour: Georgios Karakousis was runner-up at EPT London in October and and George Manousos Sotiropoulos snagged €700,000 for his runner-up finish at EPT Prague. Koutoupas is not a pro or a full-time player – he helps run his family’s wholesale businesss - but has started picking up results and stacks that some tour pros would be pretty jealous of, including 56th at EPT9 Berlin for €15,000 and 25th at the recent EPT Prague for €24,900.
Bahram Chobineh, 37, Iran
Bahram Chobineh only came to play the EPT Deauville Main Event — his first EPT ever — after *losing* a bet with his home game buddies. He was as surprised as anyone to have cashed yesterday – and has now made it to the final 16. He’s here thanks to some great hands, including folding queens to aces preflop in an eyebrow-raising hand during the first level of Day 4 and an all-in late today when he had KT against JQ and there was a ten on the turn. Chobineh still insists: "I don't know what I'm doing” but is having a great time and is now being railed by his friend Amir who flew in Wednesday night.
JP Kelly, 27, UK
This is British pro JP Kelly’s first EPT this season but he's planning to play a lot more going forward. Kelly’s lifetime tournament winnings already total more than $2.5 million. He is already a two-time WSOP bracelet winner - the 2009 WSOP $1,500 Pot Limit Hold'em event and the 2009 WSOp-E £1k tourney in London later that year. However his biggest live cashes were his 12th place in the 2012 Macau High Stakes Challenge Super High Roller for $587,778, and a deep run in the 2011 WSOP Main Event when came 26th for $302,005. His most recent big score was third in the €5k PLO side event at the PokerStars and Monte-Carlo®Casino EPT Grand Final for €22,400. Kelly said that online, he mainly plays PLO cash games – his reported online tourney winnings (on the Hendon Mob) amount to more than $1 million.
Alexandre Amiel, 39, Paris, France
Journalist and TV producer Alexandre Amiel is a recreational player who took up poker around five years ago. Alexandre Amiel spent almost all of his 20s as a news reporter for Canal+ investigating the biggest stories in the country for France's equivalent of 60 Minutes. And, after moving on, he set up his own company producing documentaries, magazine programmes and talk shows, focusing on current affairs, culture and politics.
"I'll be more happy if I win, like everybody, but this is a game," Amiel said. "People have to know it's nothing but a game. If you don't think that, you're going to have a hard time playing poker." Amiel only took up poker about five years ago, by which point he was successful enough in business, and had a young family, for him not to allow the game to take over his life. Among the numerous programs produced by Amiel is Mon Plus Beau Coup de Poker, which loosely translates as My Best Poker Coup and screens on France's TF1. Perhaps surprisingly for a "poker" show, there are neither cards nor chips involved. Instead, a series of French celebrities (artists, designers and the like) are asked to describe a moment in their career where they took a calculated risk and won.