Sunday, February 5th, 2012
The EPT Tallinn, the opening event of season 7 of the PokerStars.Com European Poker Tour, has fallen to Norweigan qualifier Kevin Stani, who took home a first prize of €400,000 after making his way through the 420 runner field.
It’s the biggest live cash to date from the 27-year-old Norweigan, who got into the final 200 of the World Series of Poker main event, while he also made the cash in the EPT San Remo event earlier in the year.
Stani has had good online results, making a deep run in the $10,000 WCOOP event last season.
Stani came through having gone into the final table well chipped up, albeit behind the leader, the French PokerStars pro Arnaud Mattern (who finished 3rd) – and he ended up winning after a good heads up battle with Russian Konstantin Bilyauer. At one point Stani five bet shoved 7h-8h on his opponent to indicate who was in charge before taking the event down.
The heads-up lasted an hour and forty minutes before things came to a head. Russian Bilyeaur had bet on a 3c9h2s flop, and Stani had called. The turn was the 4h, with Bilyeaur betting and Stani raising him. Stani called. Bilyeaur then put half his stack in on the river, the 8d and Stani moved in. The Russian called and saw Stani table 5c 6s, for a turned gutshot straight.
Online Qualifiers for the next leg of the PokerStars.com European Poker Tour, which takes place inVilamoura in Spain, are already well underway.
Tags: EPT, Kevin Stani
Wow, A gut shot straight. It just shows that you need to be creative to win one of thse big tourneys