Sebastian Ruthenberg Claims PokerStars.net EPT Barcelona and more news

September 15 2008, Robbie Davies

Sebastian Ruthenberg Wins PokerStars.net EPT Barcelona

Eventual winner Sebastian Ruthenberg cruised into the final table in style, starting the day as second in chips. It took eight hours for this German poker pro to knock out several notable players and smash his way to the €1,361,000 first place prize. This has been a pretty good year for Ruthenberg who now can add an EPT title to his WSOP bracelet he won in the summer.

The final table was actually a pretty good line up of players, including Jason Mercier and David Kitai. The final table kicked off slowly, with an obvious tentativeness in the air as no one wanted to bust first, and everyone wanted to relish being on a PokerStars.net EPT televised final table.

Once the bustouts started they came pretty quickly. First to go out in 8th was Martin Nielsen from Denmark. His failed to hold up against the of Mercier, and Nielsen went home with €119,000. 7th place went to Samuel Chartier, the Canadian representative. Chartier was busted out by UK player Fintan Gavin, winning €178,000 for his seventh place finish.

Former PokerStars.com EPT San Remo winner Jason Mercier was the next to go. He finished in 6th place when he went all-in preflop with only to be called by the Irishman who happened to hold . The board came up blanks and Mercier was ousted winning €227,000 in prizemoney for his strong tournament. Gavin was clearly running better than anyone else at this table for most of it, and continued his run by busting out Dren Ukella from Germany in 5th. Dren took home €292,000 for his efforts.

4th place went to Daniele Mazzia from Italy who earned €351,000 for his finish. He ended up all in against two players who checked it down and checked the Italian out. Once three handed play started there were no bustouts for some time. This made for some lively hands and will be entertaining when it hits the TV. Eventually Kitai was knocked out in third, winning €455,000 for his efforts.

Heads-up play lasted only three hands. Ruthenberg started heads-up with a 5:1 chip lead so there was not much Gavin could do but get his chips in the middle and hope to win some showdowns. This wasn't to be as the first showdown buried the Irishman. Gavin moved in with the to be called with of Sebastian. The board ran out and the tournament was over.

Gavin takes home a nice payday of €792,000 for second, while the champion Ruthenberg won a huge first place finish of €1,361,000 after four days of brilliant poker play.

The next stop on the PokerStars.net EPT is in London, and we can't wait!

bwin Outlawed in Germany

In a weird decision, the German courts have moved to outlaw bwin gaming. Bwin is known as one of the biggest sites in Germany, and was in court to try and suspend a previous ruling outlawing the site. Bwin says it will still offer its services to the German gaming market despite this ruling. The site is facing the possibility of heavy fines if it continues, even though bwin claims that the German ruling overrides European Union laws. It will be interesting to see how this develops.

WCOOP Going Strong

The WCOOP is drawing to its conclusion with one more week to go of huge prize-pools and tournaments. Be sure to check out our Sunday wrap–up article for all the WCOOP action from this Sunday, including the $25K heads-up matches! Next Sunday is the Main Event which is a $5,200 tournament. This Event has plenty of satellites running around the clock on PokerStars so give it a shot. Many of the satellites are FPP based too, so a deposit may not even be required.

Borgata Open WPT

The WPT kicked off the Borgata Open on Sunday, and is boasting an insane $5M guarantee. This would mean that over 500 people have to enter to make no overlay, and much to the delight of players, it didn't look like it would fill up. There were many last minute satellites going to try and fill it up, but ultimately the organizers fell 5 players short and are having to put up $50K of overlay money! Some funny stuff was happening in this tournament, as PokerStars had the $25K Heads-up going on, many players were running back and forth from the tournament to their laptops up in the hotel rooms.

This tournament is super deep-stack with 40K starting chips, so it will be a real test on the best players in the game. Tomorrow is day two with just over 300 players left.

The final table payouts will make someone a millionaire:

1st: $1,425,500

2nd: $750,000

3rd: $387,500

4th: $337,500

5th: $287,500

6th: $237,500

7th: $187,500

8th: $137,500

9th: $100,000

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