Hip hip Boeree - Liv wins EPT San Remo
Thursday, 22 April 2010
UB pro Liv Boeree has won her first major tournament in the form of the 1,240-player PokerStars EPT San Remo event, making herself €1,250,000 richer after defeating Sweden's Jakob Carlsson heads-up.
Boeree reached the 7-handed final table in fifth place after building a stack on Day 4 and holding on until the final table. At the final table she put her opponents to the test with persistent 3-bets and check-raises, eventually amassing a huge stack and going into heads-up play a chip leader.
The lead swung between her and Carlsson for some time, before it all went in before the flop at 150k/300k blinds. Boeree raised to 700k and Carlsson shoved the big blind for 6.3m. Boeree coolly called and turned up 55 against Ad-6d, which held on a blank board to win her the tournament – her largest cash since the European Ladies’ Championship for $42,000.
The jubilant winner said, "I don't want to cry because that's not professional but I can't believe that I've won this. This is incredible. Everyone today played so good. Jakob was the one person I didn't want to get heads-up against, he's such a good player. But I ran well and I played good." adding, "It's exactly what I've been working towards when I started playing poker four years ago; to win a major tournament, I just didn't think it'd come so quickly."
Fellow Brit Michael Piper, sporting some magnificent facial topiary, finished in fourth place for his biggest tournament score to date.
The final table positions and payouts were as follows:
1 - Liv Boeree, UK, €1,250,000
2 - Jacob Carlsson, Sweden, €750,000
3 - Toni Pettersson, Finland, €420,000
4 - Michael Piper, UK, €345,000
5 - Alexey Rybin, Russia, €270,000
6 - Giuseppe Diep, Italy, €210,000
7 - Claudio Piceci, Italy, €150,000
8 - Atanas Gueorguiev, Bulgaria, €90,000