Spanish poker pro Sergio Aido won the largest buy-in tournament at this year’s PokerStars and Monte-Carlo Casino EPT in Monaco and took home a massive cash prize of over $1.7 million. The young player defeated 51 competitors on his way to the prestigious €100K Super High Roller title on Monday, winning the biggest cash prize from a live event in his career.
With his achievement, 30-year-old Spaniard Sergio Aido, who currently resides in London, took down one of the richest live poker tournaments of this year Monday evening. The €100,000 Super High Roller kicked off on Saturday as the ninth event at the 2019 PokerStars and Monte-Carlo Casino European Poker Tour (EPT). The festival, running from April 25 through May 4 in the spectacular Monte-Carlo Bay Hotel & Resort, draws in some of the world’s best poker professionals with its 41 events and millions of dollars in a total prize pool.
Despite the serious buy-in of €100,000, the Super High Roller attracted a strong entry field of 52 players and generated a prize pool of little more than €5 million. The Final Day of the event started Monday afternoon with only 9 survivors but, unfortunately, only 7 of them were destined to make it to the money. Canadian Luc Greenwood was eliminated by Koray Aldemir (Germany) on the first hand of the day but soon after that, Aldemir followed after he lost to another Canadian player, Daniel Dvoress.
The bubble has burst in the €100K Super High Roller at #EPTMonteCarlo.
Who missed out on €268K? Roll the clip to find out, then click here for more videos: https://t.co/OQwSSzhHpP pic.twitter.com/xyh42DznME
— PokerStarsBlog (@PokerStarsBlog) April 29, 2019
Although Sergio Aido started the day as the small stack with only 350,000 in chips, he managed to quickly rise to the top of the leaderboard after taking several key pots. The first one to be eliminated by him was Poland’s Wiktor Malinowski (Day 1 Chip Leader) who took home the minimum cash prize of €264,860 for his 7th place. The next one to go was UK’s Charlie Carrel who lost to Aido and finished sixth for €327,930. Belarus’ poker sensation Mikita Badziakouski also could not keep up and finally left the table at the fifth place, taking €428,830 in cash prize.
Dvoress, who returned as chip leader on Monday, was then eliminated at the fourth place and received €554,950 in prize money. He was followed by defending champion and Canadian poker star Sam Greenwood (3rd place, €731,530) who lost to Aido and left him against another Spanish player in the heads-up battle, Jesus Cortes. With Aido’s nearly 5-to-1 chip lead, however, Cortes had a little chance of surviving for long and was finally defeated by his countryman, taking the runner-up spot and a cash prize of €1,147,750.
Sergio Aido, on the other hand, took the EPT Monte Carlo Super High Roller title and the first-place prize of €1,589,190 ($1,772,393). This is the biggest live tournament cash for him and with it, his total live poker earnings exceed $10.5 million.
Strong Start for 2019 EPT €5,300 Main Event
This year’s PokerStars and Monte-Carlo Casino EPT enjoys great popularity among poker enthusiasts and professionals from Europe and all over the world.
One of the highlights of the festival is certainly the €5,300 Main Event, which kicked off on Monday and during the first starting flight, it attracted 342 entries. 182 of them survived and are returning to the poker tables for Day 2 on Wednesday, along with the players who make it through Day 1b today.
There's a €50K High Roller. There's a 537-runner Cup playing to a winner. And there's a jam-packed €5,300 Main Event. It's just another Tuesday at #EPTMonteCarlo. Follow everything: https://t.co/a2f4iDvOgR pic.twitter.com/C93E1GkIHV
— PokerStarsBlog (@PokerStarsBlog) April 30, 2019
There are already more than 300 registrations and until the end of the day, organizers expect the field to exceed 300 players once again. One of the first players to sit at the tables today was Sergio Aido, along with other notables such as Thomas Boivin, the 2018 EPT Prague € 25,000 No Limit Hold’em Champion, 2017 WPT National Brussels winner Sergio Castelluccio, US poker pro Maria Ho, one of UK’s top players Paul Newey, and more.
- Author
Harry Evans
