English Poker Open

The English Poker Open

The English Poker Open (EPO) is one of Europe's newest and most exciting live poker tournaments, both celebrating and reaffirming England as one of the world's best live poker locations. Previously held at Nottingham's Dusk Till Dawn poker club and at The Palm Beach, Mayfair, London

English Poker Open 2012

What began with 137 players came to an exciting conclusion with Mickey Petersen winning the 2012 English Poker Open. The Dane defeated Sweden's Chris Bjorin heads-up to win a £78,660 ($127,807) top prize and become "England's King of Poker." Petersen came into the heads-up portion with a 4.5-to-1 chip advantage, which really helped him push an aggressive style. Bjorin did manage to double up a couple of times, but he was never able to pull even. The final hand provided plenty of drama as Mickey shoved with 9c-9h and Chris called from the big blind with As-Kc. The board was dealt 7h-Td-8h-5s-5h, which made Petersen's pocket 9's the better hand.

Here are the Final Standings for the EPO2012

English Poker Open 2010

194 International Poker players were whittled down to 9 for the final table of RakeTheRake's English Poker Open, London 2010. After just an hour of EPO final table play, 9 players became 5. Stephen Chelmski was the first to go, closely followed by Behbehani. Englishman Mark Norman was next to go, finishing 7th; and last of the hour's departures was Brent Lehring who left the table with over £3.5k.

Fifth to fall was Andrew Brennan, followed by Felipe Ramos who was pushed out by Sebastiaan Crul with pocket 7's and a further 7 on the flop. Matthew Frankland (the last remaining of the 3 final Englishmen) took 3rd place after slowly losing the chip lead, walking away with a stonking £77,400.

That left Sebastian Crul of the Netherlands and Germany's Fabian Quoss to fight it out at the EPO Main Event final table. The two battled it out for 1st place (and a prize difference of £90,000) for an hour and a half. Here's how the deciding moment played out:

• Sebastian Crul shows Ac 5c
• Fabian Quoss shows As Qd
• The Flop: Ad Kh 8h
• The turn 3d
• The river 6d

So after four days of hard work, Fabian Quoss became the English Poker Open 2010 champion, walking away with a huge prize of £220,650 as well as the prestigious George trophy. 2nd place finisher Sebastian Crull was by no means disappointed though - the Dutchman left the EPO 2010 with an impressive £129,000.

English Poker Open 2010 Final Table Players and Payouts

English Poker Open 2009

RakeTheRake's English Poker Open 2009 ran from September 15th - 17th at Nottingham's Dusk Till Dawn card room, the UK's biggest dedicated poker venue. The 2009 EPO promised a guaranteed prize pool of at least $1 million and consisted of the $5,300 buy-in Main Event, and two side events with £250 and £500 buy-ins.

The English Poker Open live tournament 2009 saw some of the biggest pro poker names in attendance, including Annette Obrestad, Marc Goodwin, Live Boeree, Phil Hellmuth and Doyle Brunson. Despite the presence of so many of these seasoned poker pros, it was English amateur David La Ronde who walked away with the EPO 2009 title and £208,367 prize! La Ronde actually narrowly missed out on securing an EPO 2009 seat in the English Poker Open qualifiers. He didn't make it through one of Full Tilt Poker's English Poker Open satellites, but eventually managed to purchase a seat at a reduced rate from RakeTheRake.

David La Ronde explained how things went once he got to heads up with Michael Tureniec:

• I looked down at A-7 and what he did made me play the hand the way I did. He raised to 58k on my BB and I remembered a few hands we had played before where I'd re-raised to 150k. I thought I'd do the same thing and he will read that as weak. If he's weak he will shove. I had it in my mind and it worked perfectly. He didn't even tank it, he just shoved. I just thought he could have absolutely anything in that spot so I called and he showed K-10.

And that's how a business practice accountant and amateur poker player won RakeTheRake's English Poker Open 2009! Below is a look at the final table English Poker Open results.

English Poker Open 2009 Final Table Players and Payouts