Rick van Bruggen Wins Estrella Poker Tour Main Event for $600,000

The first Main Event of the EPT Barcelona festival has come to a conclusion and the Estrellas Poker Tour Main Event paid out a whopping $600,000 top prize to Dutch player Rick van Bruggen as he took down a final table that included players such as Renat Bohdanov and Jack Sinclair.

Final Day Drama  

With an incredible total field of 6,313 players, just nine remained when the final day began. Across a dramatic day of action, just six hours elapsed from the start of the final table to the crowning of a new Estrellas Poker Tour champion. The 27-year-old cash game player turned into a tournament champion as he won the biggest tournament of his career to date at Casino Barcelona on the Spanish coast.

It took an hour for the first elimination of the day, during which time, the late-showing Ahmad Rehaime arrived at the felt after play had kicked off. Renat Bohdanov was the first player to depart, cashing for $55,500 after losing a coinflip with pocket fours, van Bruggen’s ace-king hitting an ace on the flop to reduce the field to eight.

It wasn’t long afterwards that Yoan Asparuhov busted in eighth place, cashing for $72,170 when he lost to Hendrik Soering’s aces. The Bulgarian Asparuhov had queen-jack suited, but couldn’t hit help on a nine-high board that turned him a gutshot straight draw but never paid off on the river.

Van Bruggen Takes Control

Ahmad Rehaime from Canada busted in seventh place for $93,800 when he got his short stack of seven big blinds into the middle with jack-seven and was unable to overcome his opponent van Bruggen, who was dominating with jack-ten. The board ended in a ten to reduce the field to six players.

Next to go was the German player Bjorn Bruns, who cashed for $121,970 in sixth place, his ace-jack dominated and destroyed by Kyle Ho’s ace-king, with a ten-high board not helping the European player as the Canadian player Ho ruled the roost.

Despite winning that hand, Ho was gone in fifth, winning $158,600 when his ace-eight couldn’t overtake van Bruggen’s pocket nines, with a full house hitting on the river for the latter after two tens on the flop were followed by the nine on the river.

Sinclair Makes it Deep

Four players remained, and two players of the final quartet were Dutch. One of those was out in fourth as Hendrik Soering busted for $206,190. Soering lost with ten-seven as queen-ten did the trick for van Bruggen, a queen and seven on the flop but no further help for Soering coming.

Out in third was Simon Bouaksa from Luxembourg, who busted for $268,100 when he went all-in with king-queen and fell to van Bruggen’s king-deuce, a board of A-5-3-2-5 seeing the worse hand win.

Jack Sinclair made the heads-up, but while the British player had the experience, he didn’t have the chips, with just 26 million chips to van Bruggen’s 164.5 million. Van Bruggen’s chip stack told, as he got the better of Sinclair in a fascinating final hand.

Sinclair had jack-deuce, and was dominated by van Bruggen’s jack-six, and on the flop of 9-7-6, both players checked. The turn of a jack led to a check-raise from van Bruggen that was called by Sinclair. The river was a deuce, giving Sinclair two pair, but when the chips went in from the dutchman, Sinclair called with his opponent holding jack-six for a better two-pair.

Having previously won a best result $20,000 in live tournaments, van Bruggen was blown away as he told PokerNews after the event.

“This is actually very insane. $600k? I don’t even know what to say. I’m going to spend some money for sure. Jack is a very good player so I was trying to just play very tight and hope people bust and then I just got lucky with good cards, ran it up and it was very simple at that point. It was all luck.”

In this article, the current exchange rate of 1:1 has been applied to the winnings in Euros being converted to U.S. dollars.