Friday, 29th March 2024 01:12
Home / Uncategorized / EPT11 Barcelona: German production line still going strong

While Joe Stapleton may jokingly refer to “Year of Romania” on the EPT Live coverage, we all know that it’s actually the year of Germany. Or rather the years of Germany. Players from Germany have dominated the Super High Roller and High Roller events for a while now and the last season of the EPT in which a German didn’t win a Main Event was Season 6.

A throwaway line from Dominik Nitsche at EPT Deauville in January of this year illustrated that, just like their football team, in poker Germany have tremendous strength in depth. Nitsche joked that had he been born almost anywhere else in Europe he would be in contention for that country’s Player of the Year in the GPI European Poker Awards. But, because he’s German he’s not even in their top 10.

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Nitsche – just one of Germany’s finest

And the two-time bracelet winner, LAPT champion and WPT Champion has a very valid point. Despite all his titles and cashes (75 to date) he’s only ranked 11th on the all-time German money list. He is behind Christoph Vogelsang, who only started playing tournaments ten months ago. (Vogelsang’s third place finish in the Big One for One Drop is a decisive factor there.)

And the production line shows no sign of slowing down. Germany had the most players in the Main Event, 170 to be precise, which accounted for 11 per cent of the field. Yet there are three Germans at the final table, so 37.5 per cent of those who made the final table are German. It all means that the first and last awards of this record breaking festival are likely to go to a German, Ole Schemion having collected his EPT10 Player of the Year award earlier this week.

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Lettau and the lucky hat

And wouldn’t you know it, Schemion has managed to make the final table. Sort of. He is railing his friend Andre Lettau at the final table and has lent the 27-year-old his hat for the duration. Lettau is well-known in the German poker community and might soon be known to the poker community at large. To find out more about him, fellow Germans Ji Zhang, Hossein Ensan and the rest of the final table, check out these final table player profiles we made earlier.

Follow all the action from the tournament floor on the main EPT Barcelona page. There’s hand-by-hand coverage in the panel at the top, including chip counts, and feature pieces below. Follow the action from the High Roller on the High Roller page. There’s also EPT Live, which is streaming the Final Table of the Main Event.

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