Welcome to the 2014 PokerStars and Monte-Carlo®Casino EPT Grand Final Main Event at the Beautiful Salles des Etoiles room at Le Sporting
Ten years of the European Poker Tour is about to draw to a close. It all began back in 2004 at Barcelona when Spain’s Alexander Stevic won the €1,000 buy-in event for €80,000. The tour has since gone from strength to strength and is now established as the biggest, richest most prestigious poker tour on the planet creating 41 millionaires with the Main Event buy-in now €10,000.
Just six days ago, Season 10 saw the wait for a two-time winner finally end as Victoria Coren Mitchell made history by winning the EPT Sanremo Main Event for €476,100 to go with her win at EPT London in Season 3. She will be playing this event to see if she can make it three.
Steve O'Dwyer was the winner here last year, beating a field of 531 and conquering arguably the toughest final table recorded in EPT history to take home €1,224,000. He will be back to defend his title.
Some of the biggest names in world poker are here to compete for the title including Team PokerStars Pros Daniel Negreanu, Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier, Liv Boeree, Barry Greenstein and Jason Mercier.
Others notables to look out for are Scott Seiver, Dominik Panka and PokerStars Team Online players Mickey Petersen, Isaac Haxton and Marc-Andre Ladouceur .
The race to be crowned EPT Player of the year began at this season’s first event in Barcelona and it is Ole Schemion who now holds an unassailable lead with 1,086.33 points He is set to stretch his lead as he is currently competing at the final table of the Super High Roller. Thomas Muhlocker is second on 822.45 and Team PokerStars Pro Vanessa Selbst is third on 803.87. All three of them will be competing in the Main Event.
Many players have won a satellite into the main event including last season’s Super High Roller winner Max Altergott, who won his package in a special 25,000 FPP VIP Bash. French veteran Jean-Noel Thorel won his seat on PokerStars.fr. UKIPT London High Roller winner Marc Daubach, Russian Artem Litvinov and Italian pro Luca Moschitta also won main event seats on PokerStars.
Five players, including EPT Prague champion Roberto Romanello, won seats in the €2k Grand Final Hybrid satellite held during EPT Sanremo, while six players qualified via live satellites held in casinos around Europe including the Aviation Club in Paris, Kings Casino in Rozvadov, Concord Club Casinos in Austria and Casino Valencia.
The action kicks off at Noon local time as the hopeful players begin with a stack of 30,000 chips with blinds starting at 50 /100. Stay with us over the next seven days of exciting poker to see who can be the next person to write themselves into the EPT history books as ten years of the European Poker Tour comes to an end. The PokerNews Live Reporting Team will be on hand throughout to bring you all the drama and stories as well as the latest chip counts and videos.