The World Series of Poker Europe Event #8 €2,500 Short Deck tournament drew a total of 98 entries to create a total prize pool of €214,130. The event started on Sunday and saw 20 players bag a stack ahead of Monday’s Day 2. Julien Martini had the fourth biggest stack in the field with 379,000 chips at the end of Sunday’s action and was able to convert that top-five stack into a victory for the second WSOP gold bracelet of his career and the tournament’s top prize of €60,009.
Martini won his first bracelet when he took down the WSOP 2018 $1,500 Omaha Hi-Lo 8 or Better event for $239,771. With this win (translating to about $67,800 in USD), Martini now has over $5 million in live tournament earnings per his Hendon Mob page. The French pro now has 32 WSOP cashes to his name worth over $900,000. His biggest cash to date came in 2019 when he finished runner-up in the $25,000 PSPC PokerStars Players Championship for $2,974,000.
Familiar faces on Day 2
The highest-profile player to make Day 2 was GGPoker Ambassador Bertrand “ Elky” Grospellier. The two-time bracelet winner entered Day 2 sitting in 15th place on the leaderboard with 148,500 chips and wound up being eliminated on the money bubble in 16th place. Grospellier was live to a triple-up when his all-in was called by both Didier Rabl and Julien Martini, but the board eventually ran out to give Martini trip nines and Elky an inferior ace-high.
Roland Israelashvili secured a min-cash of €4,095 with his 14th-place finish. Israelashvili was one of only two players alongside Ben Yu to finish the 2021 World Series of Poker with more cashes than Daniel Negreanu as he and Yu both had 19 WSOP cashes to Negreanu’s 18. The WSOP-grinder is the all-time leader in WSOP cashes with 306, having earned 140 cashes in WSOP events, 143 in WSOP circuit events and now 19 cashes in WSOPE tournaments.
Emil Bise won the €1,350 WSOPE Mini Main Event last week for a first-place prize of €260,525 and looked like he might be on his way to a second bracelet in this event. Bise had the fourth largest chip stack heading into Day 2 and was still in the mix with the short stack with three players left to go. The Mini Main Event winner eventually got his final 300,000 chips in with pocket jacks against Martini’s queen-nine and was eliminated after the board ran out queen-eight-six-king-nine.
Julien Martini took a 2-to-1 chip lead into his heads-up bout with Philipp Schwabb. The heads-up portion of the tournament didn’t last long as Martini was able to win on Schwab’s first all-in hand holding a suited ace-king against Schwab’s king-jack offsuit. Martini out-kicked Schwab to lock up the victory after the board ran out king-high.
Final Table Payouts
1. Julien Martini: €60,009
2. Philipp Schwab: €37,087
3. Emil Bise: €26,182
4. Reto Herrmann: €18,856
5. Brian Cornell: €13,858
6. Christian Stratmeyer: €10,399
7. Nicolas Bokowski: €7,971
Featured Image Credit: Flickr - World Poker Tour
