Sebastian Sorensson Wins PSC Barcelona Main Event For €987,043

(Photo: Clubpoker.net)

You wake up every morning and you go to your job in a warehouse. Come home in the evenings, play a couple of online poker tourneys, just to get a little extra walking around money on the side. There’s a €215 satellite for the PSC in Barcelona that looks tasty… and 14 hours later you’re down in Spain sipping expenses-paid mojitos in the shade and waiting for the Main Event to kick off, six more days and you’re a US dollar millionaire.

That’s the Scandinavian dream, as lived out by Sebastian Sorensson this week.

White Beaches, Blue Ocean, Green Baize

The PSC Barcelona Main Event kicked off on the 23rd with an astonishing 1,682 people ponying up or satelliting in, making for a prize pool of €8,410,000 ($9,726,834) comfortably exceeding the €7 million guarantee promised by PokerStars.

The Main Event came at the end of a couple of weeks of play at the Casino Barcelona – including two one-day €25,500 events – and ran over 6 days. Day 2 onwards was live streamed on PokerStars.tv, with the sixth day being a six man final table a la the WPT broadcasts.

The scale of the event was intimidating for the champion to be; only his second live tournament and used to online poker’s rather shorter running times. But he hung in there. 

In 2015, he got a decent win off the back of a outsider bet on Mixed Martial Arts, which he rolled over first on Trump at 3-1 to take the Republican nomination then again to take the Presidency. The key in Barcelona was much the same: careful picks and other people’s bad luck.

The Final Table

The Swedish semi-pro found himself at an intense final table, with everyone short stacked it was something of a free for all. Still, just by having chips to unbag at the six man FT he’d guaranteed himself the equivalent of $300,000 in Euros.

Despite the short stacks, after Usman Siddique went out in 6th, five handed play ground on for 70-odd hands over several hours. 

When the field was finally down to three players (Sorensson, and) and average stacks were around 20bb the players struck a deal. Guaranteed payouts of €917,347 (Lachezar Petkov - 2nd), €850,110 (Raffaele Sorentinno - 3rd) and €887,043 for Sorensson, plus €100,000 set aside for first.

When asked what was next he answered:

“I will probably buy a whole bunch of nice shit,” adding, “Do I continue working in a warehouse? I don’t think so.”

He has already challenged Doug Polk to a heads up match, so his career is off to a good start.

Final Table Cashes: