It is quiet with just the sounds of quiet conversations going on around the room. At the far end of the main hall in the Casino Barriere the organisers have built up an impressive main stage. On one side of the stage you have the coveted trophy and on the other you have an iced bowl of drinks for the players.
Alex Wice is dancing to the sounds of Rihanna in the background. He has his familiar purple woollen hat on with a set of white headphones over the top. Kaspars Renga is deep in conversation with Ruslan Pryryk. Anthony Hnatow has just arrived into the hall being pursued by a cameraman. Julien Claudepierre is leant against a table with his headphones draped around his neck. Our chip leader Martin Jocobson is missing his trademark white cap but looks very smart for this special occasion and Lucie Cohen is just pacing backwards and forwards, chewing gum no doubt dreaming about the next few hours of play.
Tournament Director Thomas Kremser has just called everyone to take their seats and the flashes from the cameras are buzzing around the room
It looks as though some of the players still haven't arrived yet ("Hmmm, play for �880,000 or shall I spend another five minutes in bed?") so we think the final table probably won't be starting for at least another 10 minutes or so yet.
Lucien Cohen is an amateur player who enjoys playing Pot Limit Omaha cash games. He's been playing poker for 20 years having started, like many in France, with good old five card draw. Since EPT Deauville started, Lucien has been repeatedly seen showing table mates and spectators a plastic rat which he was often ��kissed�� while playing all-in pots. This lucky charm is actually the official mascot of the pest control company Cohen owns in Paris. Cohen is being supported in Deauville by his wife, kid sister and various friends and is very excited about playing an EPT final table. He plans to play more live tournaments in the future.
Hallaert is a semi-professional player who lives in Namur and runs tournaments at the local casino. He also runs marketing for the casino catering for non-French speakers. He��s played numerous EPTs (his guess is anything from ten to 15) and has qualified for most of them. Making the final �C where he��s guaranteed at least �66,800 �C is not his biggest live result. He came sixth at the Master Classics in Amsterdam in 2009 for �86,184 and last season, he came 37th at the EPT Grand Final for �35,000. He also won the PokerStars Sunday Warm-Up tourney in January 2009 and was top of the PokerStars TLB the same month. He is now keen to become the first ever Belgian EPT champion.
Alex has been playing poker since before he went to high school. He carried on playing part-time while at Waterloo University studying Maths before dropping out to play full-time in August 2008 after winning PokerStars�� Sunday Warm Up for $135,000. He is a regular online high stakes MTT player and has also been playing live for the last two years. He cashed at EPT London in season six but his big breakthrough in live events came at last summer��s WSOP where he came third for $102,314 in the $2,500 World Championship Mixed Events 8 game. All his focus since he turned pro has been on improving his game and he does a lot of research analysing hands on his computer. He credits a lot of his success with deep stack tournament play to Xuan Liu, who also played here, and has helped him over the last few months.
Renga doesn't describe himself as a professional player. He plays a lot of poker but his day job is running a hunting magazine. This is Renga��s fourth EPT cash out of only seven tries. The 44-year-old has already made the money twice in Barcelona (Season 6 and 7) and Prague just a month ago. Those results come in addition to a string of final tables and deep runs in smaller tourneys in Lithuania, Estonia and his native Latvia. His most lucrative cash before now was runner-up in a �1,000 Pot-Limit Omaha side event (��my favorite game��, he says) during EPT Berlin for �29,700. Renga is being supported by his wife and two children who are following his progress from home.
Prydryk has been playing EPTs for several years and first came to notice when he made the final of EPT Warsaw in Season 6. He finished fifth in that event for around �75,000 �C his biggest ever cash. He has also enjoyed some other good EPT finishes including 48th place at EPT Prague just before Christmas for �10,000 and 91st place at EPT Berlin last season for �11,000 - as well as winning a local event in Yalta, Ukraine last May for �67,000. Former lawyer Prydryk has been playing poker for more than four years now and now considers himself a pro. He is being supported in France by his wife Oksana; the couple��s 13-year-old daughter Irisa is at home. Prydryk��s biggest poker success was winning the 2009 Gary Bowman Cup when he became the poker champion of Ukraine. Outside of poker, he enjoys watching and playing football.
PokerStars qualifier Martin Jacobson, who goes into the final as chip leader, has numerous great results to his name including his most recent and biggest cash �C runner-up at EPT Vilamoura in Portugal last September for �297,985. Other deep runs include third place at EPT Budapest in Season 5 for �197,904, runner-up at WPT Venice last year for �238,840 and a fourth place finish in the World Series $1,500 side event last summer for $183,345. His live tournament winnings are now over $1.3 million. Jacobson won his seat to Deauville via the EPT Steps satellites on New Year��s Day.
Like many people, Julien discovered poker watching the movie ��Rounders�� in 2006.. He started by playing micro-stakes online cash-games and then slowly moved up the ranks. He is now a regular at the �5/�10 tables under the user id ��Garrincho��. He mainly plays NLHE but also took up PLO recently. After completing his engineering studies 18 months ago, Julien decided to make the leap towards professional poker. His best results to date are victory in a �100,000 guaranteed online tournament and an 11th place finish at the Spanish Poker Tour final stop in 2010. During Day 5 of EPT Deauville, Julien knocked his good friend Fabrice Soulier. Apart from poker, Julien loves football - especially Zinedine Zidane and the French team ��AS Nancy��.
Anthony is a student in Computer Engineering who's been playing NLHE for three years. He doesn't want to play other variants saying he'd rather wait until he��s perfected Hold'em. His favorite hunting ground is the cash-game table, online at first (under the nickname ��nartoof��) and recently in Paris cardrooms. Since the French online gaming market was regulated in June 2010, Anthony has started playing more tournaments because, he explains, the fields on French websites are a bit easier to navigate. He played his first live tournament last December during the Forges-Les-Eaux stop of the PokerStars France Poker Series. That's when he decided he would play EPT Deauville. If Anthony wins tomorrow, he plans to buy a house and turn it into a night-club, complete with entry fee and all !
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