The €10,300 High Roller has crowned its champion at the PokerStars European Poker Tour Paris, held at Le Palais De Congres, and with it a hugely successful EPT Paris 2024.
Oliver Weis of Germany is the newly crowned champion, having overcome the record-breaking 512-strong high-quality field and a marathon final table to claim the trophy, along with the huge first prize of €970,200, amounting to the lion’s share of the €4,915,200 prize pool.
After 13 hours of play, Weis will have been delighted to dispose of his final two opponents, Luca Marki and Sergey Lebedev, in one hand, when his pocket kings held against Lebedev’s pocket jacks and Marki’s flush draw.
Weis, who finished 115th in the WSOP Main Event in 2022, is no stranger to six-figure scores, having finished second in a PLO High Roller at the PCA in 2023 for over $200,000. However this victory is by far the biggest of his career.
EPT Paris €10,300 High Roller Final Table Results
| Rank | Player | Country | Prize |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Oliver Weis | Germany | €970,200 |
| 2 | Luca Marki | Switzerland | €606,750 |
| 3 | Sergey Lebedev | Russia | €433,350 |
| 4 | Ihar Soika | Belarus | €333,400 |
| 5 | Stanislav Zegal | Germany | €256,500 |
| 6 | Carlos Ribeiro | Brazil | €197,300 |
| 7 | Nikita Kuznetsov | Russia | €151,800 |
| 8 | Alexander Tkatschew | Austria | €116,750 |
| 9 | Tomi Brouk | Finland | €90,950 |
Winner’s Reaction
PokerNews managed to grab a word with the newly crowned champion, asking him what it felt like to capture a High Roller title at EPT Paris.
Weis responded, “Amazing, I’ve been playing a long time, and it feels great to finally get a major title.” The pro confirmed he’d been playing since he was 18 and dabbles in a bit of everything in terms of tournament and cash games but, with a laugh, “no mixed games”.
Weis stated the final table was “one of the craziest I’ve been involved in, short stacks doubling everywhere, and with a lot of variance at the end, so just really happy to win.”
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Final Day Action
32 players returned for Day 3, with Ehsan Amiri, Robin Ylitalo (aiming for his fourth EPT title) and Oliver Weis coming into the day as the top three chip stacks.
The first player to fall was American Michael Jozoff, who ran ace-king into Alexander Tkatschew‘s kings.
Ylitalo got off to a difficult start after he also ran ace-king into Vladas Tamasauskas’ aces. Still, he would recover before ultimately finishing just shy of the final table in 13th.
The knockouts came relatively quickly with notable names such as Timothy Adams, Joao Vieira, Joey Weissman and Alex Keating all starting the day, but departing before the final table.
Play slowed down as we got towards the final table, which was ultimately set when Amiri exited in tenth place, having got unlucky against Stanislav Zegal, who was able to overcome a spot where his ace was dominated by Amiri’s.
Weis was the chip leader going into the final table, having a reasonable lead over Nikita Kuznetsov and Segal, with Luca Marki as the short-stack. That soon changed, however, when Marki doubled-up twice in quick succession.
The first was against Tomi Brouk as he rivered a one-card flush to overcome a dominated ace situation, the second was when his pair of eights flopped a set against Carlos Ribeiro’s aces.
With short stacks doubling in some unlikely scenarios, including Ribeiro’s king-high overcoming Zegal’s flopped set of sevens with a runner-runner straight, it was almost two hours before Brouk was the first to fall at the final table, running his pocket eights into Lebedev’s pocket kings.
Lebedev then disposed of Tkatschew in eighth when he won a race with ace-queen against Lebedev’s sevens.
Kuznetsov busted in seventh when his ace-queen couldn’t get there against Lebedev’s pocket jacks.
With the agreement of the players, the clock was then subsequently reduced to 45 minutes in order to ensure an appropriate finish time for the tournament, this being the final day of the festival.
Despite that, it was another 90 minutes before Zegal busted Ribeiro in sixth with a turned set of eights.
Weis, who was generally the most aggressive and active player at the final table, then eliminated Zegal in fifth with two pair in a blind-on-blind confrontation.
Lebedev eliminated Soika in fourth when he called his jam from the small blind and found he had Soika dominated.
As mentioned above, three-handed play did not take long as Weis eliminated his final two competitors in one fell swoop to take a well-deserved victory.
That concludes PokerNews coverage of EPT Paris, in what has been a wonderful event. Be sure to check out PokerNews’ coverage of other tournaments around the world.