Poker Tournament Results

San Remo EPT Event - Season 5

Constant Rijkenberg

Tournament Report

SAN REMO, Italy, April 23, 2009: A 20-year-old economics student has won the biggest major poker tournament ever held in Europe. Constant Rijkenberg, from Amsterdam, Holland, won €1,508,000 after beating 1,177 players at the PokerStars.com EPT San Remo event in Italy. The record field created a total prize pool of €5,713,300. The young Dutchman saw off some of the best players in the world during the five-day €5,300 buy-in event including three world champions and scores of top professionals. The final hand came after six hours of play when the Finnish player Kalle Niemi, a PokerStars qualifier, went all-in with ace-ten on a ten-high board and was instantly called by Rijkenberg with pocket aces. Rijkenberg said: “I really don’t know what to feel right now. My first dream was to play an EPT, my second to play on the featured TV table, my third was to make the final table and fourth dream was to win. It’s the biggest dream you can have apart from the WSOP main event - and I’m too young to play that right now.” Rijkenberg, as champion, also wins a seat at the €10,000 EPT Grand Final to be held in Monte Carlo next week. The tournament, which is the penultimate event on season six of the EPT, attracted players from 47 countries with Italians accounting for around a third of the field. However only one Italian made the final table, Danilo D'Ettoris, who came eighth for €114,000. There were 237 players who won their seats online with PokerStars. The Croatian player Dragan Galic, who came fifth for €314,000, also broke records. Not only did he become the first player to hold the overnight chip lead every night during the tournament, he was also the first Croatian ever to cash at an EPT main event. Another record-breaker at the tournament was the Portuguese player Joao Barbosa, winner of EPT Warsaw, who celebrated his seventh cash this season. Watch EPT San Remo S5: Constant Rijkenberg Day 4 on PokerStars.tv