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Poker News Round-up: Week #41 High roller winner Matt Glantz The WSOP Europe is over for another year but London is still where all the big action is with the EPT serving up a host of different tournaments at the Hilton Metropole hotel. Kicking off proceedings was the £20,000 entry high roller event and as always seems to be the case with these very large buy in tournaments it was a relatively small field as just 79 sat down to play (although this was a big improvement on EPT Kiev’s high roller event when Shaun Deeb had to get past just two other players to win the title.) However a first prize of £542,000 is not to be sniffed at and that’s what Matt Glantz and new WSOPE bracelet winner Erik Cajelais found themselves heads up for after three days of play. Cajelais was looking good for another victory when he was happy to get all the chips in the middle with trip aces but Glantz managed to find a fifth club on the river to complete his flush and with a commanding chip lead was able to finish off the Canadian a couple of hands later. Of the other preliminary events a first ever appearance at the EPT for an eight game tournament was notable for the appearance of two former world champions at the final table as Huck Seed and Joe Hachem battled it out with the likes of David Williams and Miami John Cernuto with Richard Gryko representing the domestic interest. In the end Hachem claimed victory to record his first tournament win since his WPT title in 2006 and add another £42,400 to his winnings.  EPT London main event champ Aaron Gustavson Moving on to the £5,000 main event it was the turn of another world champion to put in an impressive performance in the biggest field London has seen for a major tournament. The decision to set up tables at the Hilton hotel’s ballroom rather than the Vic looks to have been a wise one as 730 people turned up to play, representing a 22% increase on 2008’s entry list. Reigning world champion Peter Eastgate made good progress to keep his name towards the top of the leaderboard on every day, eventually making his way to the final table as second biggest stack. Way out in front though was Aaron Gustavson with more than double the chips of any of his rivals. As the chips passed around the final table Gustavson still held a two to one lead as play was reduced to the final two, and he made pretty quick work of taking the remainder of Peter Eastgate’s stack thereafter. The final hand saw Eastgate re-raise all in with A  Thomas Rolfe A little more tournament news this week comes from a similar sized event that was also won with AQ although on this occasion it started as the underdog to Emmet Gough’s AK as Thomas Rolfe from Nottingham got lucky on the final hand to win the Irish Poker Festival main event. Rolfe’s €100,000 win came courtesy of a free entry earned via a rake race and on top of the cash prize he will also be off to the Caribbean in 2011. Sponsors Ladbrokes have announced that after a three year break their poker cruise is set to make a return, and Rolfe is the first to earn a package on the as yet unfinished Oasis Of The Seas cruise liner which will be the world’s largest passenger ship and is currently being fitted out at a total cost of around $1,400,000,000. From the online scene, the durrrr challenge took another step forward this week as Tom Dwan and Patrik Antonius resumed Omaha hostilities on Full Tilt. The session of over three hours and 1063 hands saw Dwan once again establish a decent sized lead after Antonius had previously wiped out the difference between them. The biggest pots of this latest confrontation all belonged to Dwan and he now sits with a profit of $697,532 in the match up. However, eight months on from the start of the challenge they are now still only half way through the allotted 50,000 hands so it’s little wonder that many are now losing interest and just want to see a winner. It looks like it might be a bit of a quiet week next week with the Aruba Poker Classic and PKR Heads Up Grand Slam being the most notable tournament action, but after an action packed couple of weeks we could maybe do with a little rest. After all it is only a month until it’s back to the Rio for Akenhead, Ivey et al to see who will take over from Peter Eastgate and this time around the delayed WSOP main event final table really is eagerly anticipated by pretty much everyone.
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with Gustavson happy to make the call holding a dominating A
Q
