EPT Title and €543,700 for Ognyan Dimov in Deauville

French city of Deauville has played a worthy host to several big poker tournaments over a past week or so. Amongst the different events, PokerStars EPT11 Deavuille Main Event was certainly the most important one, gathering a crowd of 592 players and generating the prize pool of €2,841,600. The lion’s share of this massive amount went to the winner, Bulgarian Ognyan Dimov, who took home a sweet €543,700 for his efforts.

With this victory, Dimov has become one of the best scoring Bulgarian players. Although he may not be that well known to the poker public, the Bulgarian is a proud owner of the Supernova Elite status on PokerStars and has been a regular on the European Poker Tour since the start of the last season.

The French players dominated the field, as expected, with 242 representatives in the event, and hence it was no big surprise that when the official final table of eight was reached, half of that number was made up of players fighting on the home soil.

Apart from the French crew, another player was also garnering some attention. The Lithuanian Matas Cimbolas made it to the final table. However, he couldn’t last long as an unsuccessful bluff attempt saw him depart in eight place, with €58,820 to his name. He was followed by Massou Cohen (€85,520), one of the four French players and with his departure the play was stopped for the day.

Final six players came back yesterday to play until only just one remains. It was Dany Parlafes returning with a huge chip-lead, having nearly half of all the chips in play in his possession. It looked like the Romanian would have an easy task before him, but once again poker has proven to be quite a slippery slope.

The first elimination came very fast, as another French player, Joseph Carlino, was sent to the rail in the very first hand. Carlino found Ace-King and was looking to double his short stack, but could not improve against pocket Jacks of Bielskis. For his performance, Carlino took home €115,650.

Despite of adding some chips to his stack after eliminating the French, the Lithuanian player wouldn’t last long himself either. Andrius Bielskis’ run came to an end with a fifth place finish. Things just wouldn’t go right for him after that first hand and he kept bleeding the chips away until he eventually ran into pocket Aces of Benjamin Buhr and that was all she wrote. Bielskis took home €147,600 from Deauville but the hopes of the first EPT title for Lithuania were once again put on hold.

France still had two representatives in the field, so they looked good to claim the title. However, it wasn’t to be, as they fell in fourth and third respectively. First, Benjamin Pollak entered the pot with a marginal hand and this would prove disastrous error. After turning King-high straight, there was no going back, but it was no good against Parlafes’ Ace high straight. Fourth place was good for €187,500.

Benjamin Buhr had some fight in him but eventually fell victim of a pretty bad three-handed cooler when his Ace-King was miles behind pocket Aces of Dimov. Still, the €242,390 bankroll boost will probably help somewhat with handling the cooler.

And then they were two, and neither of them French. Bulgarian Ognyan Dimov started as an almost two-to-one underdog to Dany Parlafes of Romania, but he was still able to somewhat bridge the huge gap that existed between Parlafes and all the other players at the start of the day.

Romanian had a great run throughout the entire Main Event, but when it mattered most, poker gods decided to look the other way. From the very start of the heads-up play, everything has gone Dimov’s way. Event Paralafes’ great play and several incredible laydowns could not save the day.

After putting up a truly epic fight, the Romanian finally had to concede and send the rest of his chips Dimov’s way when his ak fell short against aj of the Bulgarian. His runner-up finish secured him €338,700 in prize money, a very nice return for a few days of work.

However, the EPT trophy, stylish SLYDE watch and the first prize of €543,700 belonged to Ognyan Dimov. He thus joins the company of his fellow countrymen, Dimitar Danchev and Simeon Naydenov in a pursuit of the second EPT title!

Photo: Neil Stoddart