Nick Petrangelo: Another trophy to his ever-growing collection

You don't win on the subject of half 1,000,000 euros without being made to work for it. And the poker gods certainly made Nick Petrangelo put the hours in before he walked away with €413,000 at around 2am, Saturday morning, because the first major tournament champion of the EPT13 Barcelona festival.

After two long days cutting a starting field of 195 players to close by of the general table, it required another 12 hours of play to get to a champion, nearly four hours of that have been played between only three players.

Each of Petrangelo, Marcin Chmielewski and Markku Koplimaa held the chip lead on no less than three separate occasions as they tried to get it to heads up. But no person could get a result in stick and the one thing that was predictable was how unpredictable all of it was.

By the time it finally ended, it was something of a crapshoot--and Petrangelo was ultimately within the right place on the right time.

That in itself was a superb achievement. He was playing a high roller event in Hollywood, Florida, earlier this week--making a last table at about 5am on Monday morning. He was eliminated in fourth spot on Tuesday and made a touch for the airport, only making his plane with minutes to spare, after which landing in Barcelona about two hours before registration opened in this event.

He bought in for €10,000. And he re-loaded. And after three gruelling days, he's the champion. He's already meaning to play the €50,000 Super High Roller, which starts at 12:30pm tomorrow. Some people just can not help themselves.

Petrangelo was the category act at the final day, but needed to see off stiff competition from Chmielewski particularly. For a person with not a lot more than €100,000 in live tournament winnings before today, Chmielewski took to the €10K world like a duck to water. He came up one place short, but took greater than €200,000 for his troubles.

Marcin Chmielewski: Newcomer to the high roller world

Fourteen players returned today in search of a seat on the final table, however it became clear very early on that there have been no guarantees. Even the chip-lead, which belonged to Alexandru Papazian at first of the day, didn't assist in. fact, as things progressed, the chip-lead became an albatross drowned in a poisoned chalice. Nobody could keep it for long.

Papazian, having been reduce to size in quite a lot of small pots, the lost an immense one to Pavel Plesuv--kings losing to ace-king--to exit in 10th. And by that point other former chip-leaders, including Dario Sammartino and Patrick Leonard, were also at the rail. It left a last table with representatives of eight different nations: the United Kingdom, United States, Taiwan, Estonia, Russia, Moldova, China and Poland.

Final table players. Standing (l-r): Marcin Chmielewski, Nick Petrangelo, Markku Koplimaa, Kitty Kuo, Roman Korenev, Pavel Plesuv. Seated (l-r): Yang Zhang, Enzo Del Piero

Thanks to the massive hand against Papazian, Plesuv was the large stack after they got to the official final table. On the other end of the spectrum, Yang Zhang, Enzo Del Piero and Kitty Kuo were short.

Although it took a while, they might finally end up being the primary three knocked out too: Zhang was rivered by Petrangelo, who made a last-gasp straight; Del Piero ran nines into aces; and Kuo's long and talkative stay ended when she ran queens into Roman Korenev's kings.

Kitty Kuo: Sixth place

Petrangelo had taken over the chip lead by the point they were five-handed, and everybody except him was relatively short. The second-placed Korenev had only 28 big blinds because the levels crept onwards--and Korenev virtually ended up being the following man out.

He lost an enormous race with ace-king against Chmielewski's nines, and had only five big blinds when he shoved from the small blind against Plesuv. Plesuv called, but was dominated. (It was king-eight against jack-eight.) That that ended up leaving the person from Moldova short.

Then a couple of hands later, Plesuv was the following out when Korenev finished the job with ace-king against K♦J♦.

The end of Pavel Plesuv

Even after scything down Plesuv, Korenev was still a brief stack and although he had laddered to fourth, he would go no further. His 7♠7♦ couldn't out-race Chmielewski's A♠T♠ (a 10 flopped) after which there have been three.

Roman Korenev: Out in fourth

Of the general three, Petrangelo had by far probably the most esteemed reputation. He was blowing red hot for greater than two years now, and came to Spain in fine form even if he had had no sleep. His fourth on the $25,000 Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open was definitely worth the better part of $200,000.

He also had a large stack--and you may have thought that will be decisive. But what actually happened was that Petrangelo, Koplimaa and Chmielewski played one of the unpredictable passages of three-handed play the EPT has seen.

Actually, it all started to be predictable in its own way. The easy fact was that whoever took over the chip-lead surrendered it almost immediately, losing race after race, with the large chips moving from Petrangelo, to Chmielewski, to Koplimaa and back again. Scroll throughout the blow-by-blow account to look what I mean.

After a chain of outdraws and short-stack double-ups (and there really were loads) the blinds were creeping up. Eventually the three-way pass-the-parcel ended when Koplimaa's A♥7♣ couldn't beat Chmielewski's A♣J♠. Chmielewski punched the air as he took a commanding heads up lead.

Markku Koplimaa: Big win for the Estonian

Petrangelo doubled up almost immediately, with jacks against ace-king. After which he doubled, dwindled, doubled, dwindled until he finally won two races and took the title.

He can now have some much needed sleep--but will get back a few of the favourites for the remainder of this festival.

Event #7: €10,000 single re-entry

Buy-in: €10,000Entries: 240 (195 unique + 45 re-entries)Prize pool: €2,328,000

1 - Nick Petrangelo, United States, €413,0002 - Marcin Chmielewski, Poland, €285,4103 - Markku Koplimaa, Estonia, €220,2304 - Roman Korenev, Russia, €173,6705 - Pavel Plesuv, Moldova, €134,1006 - Kitty Kuo, Taiwan, €101,5007 - Enzo Del Piero, United Kingdom, €75,9008 - Yang Zhang, China, €57,270

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Read More... [Source: PokerStarsBlog.com :: European Poker Tour]