Laura Cornelius
Life on the Road
EPT Grand Final Travel Diary
Monaco: The second smallest country in the world (behind Vatican City) and a hub for the rich and famous. It is glitzy, full of glamour and very apt for the 2012 PokerStars and Monte Carlo® Casino EPT Grand Final. Season 8 was about to come to an end and we were going to do it in style.
Having come straight from Berlin to Monaco, I was already fighting the fatigue, but to arrive in this Billionaire’s Playground, the sun shining, the sky blue and the Mediterranean glistening a beautiful turquoise, I woke up again. Taking a stroll around the famous Princess Grace Avenue and becoming lost on winding pieces of Grand Prix track, I was made fully aware how beautiful this tiny municipality was. It’s the only place I have been to where instead of getting woken up by a cleaning lady hoovering out in the corridor or banging on my door, I was woken instantaneously by the whirr of a Ferrari engine. Morning, noon and night, all I could hear was fast cars, sounds of laughter, champagne pouring and wads full of money being flashed about. This place wasn’t cheap, but having explored the streets for 2 days before the tournament got underway, I was learning how to economize in a place built for multi-millionaires.
Everywhere we walked, there were signs of the preparation for the Formula One Grand Prix taking place in just a few weeks time. I would have loved to have been in Monaco for this, but we knew having the EPT Grand Final and the F1 Grand Prix at the same time might have been a recipe for disaster in terms of the amount of people in this tiny country. We arrived in Monaco for the poker just the day after the Monte-Carlo Rolex Masters tennis took place as well, so I was hoping for a surprise soiree with Raphael Nadal who took it down (unsurprisingly) but it was not to be. I did however meet Djokovich’s economist in the pool doing some lengths at Le Meridien Beach Plaza, who was full of surprisingly interesting conversation and we swapped poker gossip for tennis chat, which pleased me no end.
Here is our sightseeing tour video for Monaco. Please note, obviously as I stated previously Ferraris are everywhere here, but when we are waiting for one to feature in our video, does it want to arrive? The answer is no, but waiting for it did help my tan to progress a lot:
The Grand Final began with the €100,000 Super High Roller event, which to me is an insane amount of money; I still can’t quite get my head around it. Nonetheless, there were still 38 entrants and a total of 45 registrations as players did have a choice to re-register if they lost all their chips at the beginning. This created a prizepool of €4,432,500 and it was just as good Justin Bonomo did decide to re-register when he bust out, because he went on to win the event for €1,640,000. Not bad for 3 days work.
The main event had already got underway by the time Justin had shone in the glory of taking down the Super High Roller title. Play moved pretty quickly through the first few days and we saw a total of 665 players take their seats, creating a prizepool of €6.65m and a first place prize of €1.35m. 5 Team PokerStars Pros made the money, including Max Martinez (Italy) for €15,000, Angel Guillen (Mexico) and Sandra Naujoks (Germany) for €20,000, and Richard Toth (Hungary) and Matthias De Meulder (Belgium) for €30,000. Yet 34th was to be the best place for our Team Pros. Justin Bonomo had also made the money, after not feeling completely satisfied by his win of €1,640,000 in the Super High Roller; he also cashed for €35,000 in 28th place. Yet, it was Mohsin Charania who eventually took the EPT Grand Final down. He was heads-up against French mademoiselle and well-known online player (known as SoMuchB online), Lucille Cailly, who was the only lady to have ever made a final table at the Grand Final. She played superbly with a huge amount of aggression, but Charania just had the edge in the action of a very fast-paced final table.
Now, because this was The Grand Final, things just didn’t end once the winner of the main event had been announced. There was still the €25,000 Hi-Roller, Tournament of Champions and the EPT Awards and party to contend with. (I told you we were going to go out with a bang!) To say Justin Bonomo was running-good was an understatement. He wins the Super Hi-Roller, cashes in the main and now suddenly becomes chipleader going into the final table of the €25,000 Hi Roller. He didn’t eventually win it, but he still made 4th place for another €266,000. Madness. We left it to Daniel Negreanu and Igor Kurganov to battle it out for the €1,080,000 first prize, yet it was Kurganov who eventually took this one down, though we could tell Daniel really wanted his first EPT title. There was always the party, which we of course saw him at partying away until the wee small hours of the morning. As I prepared for the EPT Awards and my final night in the Billionaire’s Playground, Christophe Benzimra was busy winning the Tournament of Champions (with EPT Loutraki Champ Zimnan Ziyard coming 2nd and EPT Deauville Champ Jake Cody in 3rd) netting themselves a huge amount of buy-ins for Season 9 on the EPT.
Head over to the www.pokerstars.tv homepage to see the EPT Awards and Party, which show some of the winners for Player of the Year, Online Qualifier of the Year, Player’s Choice, Achievement of the Year and Country of the Year. No doubt about it, Season 8 and all its 13 stops had been a whirlwind of poker, travel and fun explorations, but we have even more hope and anticipation for Season 9 on the greatest poker tour of them all, the EPT.
EPT Tallinn: Headstands and Backstoke
My last blog was all about getting back into the Blackjack, as I competed in The European Blackjack Open last month. Since then, I am back on the road on the EPT circuit and the first stop of Season 8 was Tallinn in Estonia, somewhere I had never been before, but had heard great things about. Only the week before I left for Estonia, some hometown friends of mine had told me they were staying in the Swissotel (where we stayed and also where the tournament takes place in Tallinn) on a stag do and had mentioned what a crazy but beautiful place it was and also how the hotel club sandwiches were some of the best they'd ever tasted (they don't get out much to be fair). At weekends, the place was inundated with stags from all over Europe (but predominantly the UK I felt), leaving their trails all over the old town, making the most of the best value for money beers available and found staggering around the place til 9am in the morning. Unfortunately for us, though I did have 2 party nights, our trip would be slightly tamer and containing a lot more poker!
The tournament was a smaller field than usual, maybe due to it being the first stop on the tour and everyone still in tatters from The World Series, but Kevin Stani was there to try and keep hold of his title as well as Arnaud Mattern who had taken 3rd place the year previous. So throughout Days 1a and b, 298 players took their seats to fight it out for the €275,000 first place prize. In amongst them was the feisty Olympic Hockey Player, Fatima Moreira de Melo who has been doing really well on the EPT stops recently. During the poker playing we took a time-out so I could test her skills on the Archery Field , just because I knew she just couldn't be good at everything!!
As the field was slightly less than what we had been used to, and with all the FInnish players, we were seeing a particularly aggressive tournament; it meant the days were much shorter than we were used to. We were finishing at around 8pm every evening as opposed to 11pm, sometimes Midnight or later in some tournaments. So we were really able to take advantage of the long daylight hours in Tallinn. I can confidently say, some of the sunsets I saw in Tallinn were some of the most beautiful I had ever seen and the sun was not setting until at least 11pm each night! Our party had been pushed back until the evening of Day 3, so this evening we all got our best frocks on (including the poker players), to party it up at The Vabank Club in the heart of the old town. I had a few too many 'free drinks' as usual and think I spent the best part of an hour trying to convince Roberto Romanello to prop bet me €5000 to do something 'a bit mad'. This was because a few days previously, Praz Banzi and he had come up to Sarah Grant and I very excitedly and exclaimed, "We bet our mate to get in the water fountain in Tallinn and do a few rounds of back-stroke" And low and behold, they showed us the footage on their IPad of their friend getting into a small pond, about knee high water, and much to the amusement and shock of an elderly couple and tramp sitting on benches nearby, swinging his arms all over the place as he backstroked around the tiny pond. He was no Ian Thorpe, but he was paid the €5000 to get a bit wet, smelly and look like a wally, something I'd be well up for!! But back to the party and when Romanello said he'd prop bet me to do a headstand in the club, I tanked and tanked, but knowing I was going to be unsuccessful, given my intoxication and general uselessness at headstands, I offered a roly poly instead. Needless to say, I never got my €5000!
FInal Table Day loomed and before we knew it, it was over. It was aggressive all the way with predominantly Finnish Players making it over before it even got started. It was the Swiss Omaha Cash Online Prodigy, Ronnie Kaiser, who reigned in the glory though and kept his chiplead going for 2 days! He was very happy with his brand new EPT Champion Title and no doubt, we will see a lot more of him on the EPT Circuit during Season 8. Our next stop will be Barcelona next week, which I am very excited about. Barcelona is a fantastic city with great nightlife. I just hope I get to see a bit... I have been practicing my headstands afterall 
Life as a PokerNews Hostess!
So this is my first blog as a brand new PokerNews girl. Although I say new, I feel I'm getting well into the zone now after covering EPT Snowfest, EPT Berlin and The Big Game Live. Its surprising how daunting the whole scenario was at first for me; the hours I spent trying to memorise poker player's faces and say totally unpronouncable Scandinavian names, watching hours on end of PokerNews Videos thinking 'But... I'm never gonna be as good as Gloria or Lynn'. Though the lead up was indeed tough and nerve-racking to a certain extent, I hope to be en-route to mastering my own technique of making videos fun and educational at the same time.
EPT Snowfest was such a great place to start; fun in the beautiful snowy alps with mornings free to ski, snowboard or just take a jacuzzi at the hotel, which I have to say suited me down to the ground! Here's the very first video I made for PokerNews:
As the players began to trickle in throughout Days 1a and 1b, I listened, I observed and I took note of Gloria Balding, aka The Master. By Day 3, I felt so much more confident with my videos and I felt it was easy to see this in my style. I still cannot believe how lucky I am to have been given my dream job, combining poker, presenting and travelling. Lynn Gilmartin sure was right with her philosphy in her initials, Life really is Good. To top the event off in Austria I decided to organise a group trip paragliding, we went off the morning of the Final Table day, which proved absolutely hilarious, exhilirating and beautiful. And to end the day, young Russian Vladimir Geshkenbein took the EPT Snowfest title. If you want to take a look at the whole week for me in a recap, here's the video!
Just last week, I was asked rather spontaneously to cover The Big Game Live up at the Dusk Til Dawn Casino in Nottingham, UK. We were all rather perplexed to the whole event, as a 48 Hour Cash Game, being live-streamed for the first ever time at www.pokernews.com it was something completely new and innovative, so of course we were nervous, but also very excited. I was even a little star-struck at first as there were some really big names playing this event including Jennifer Tilly, my boss Tony G, Devilfish and David 'Viffer' Peat. As soon as I got there, the atmosphere was buzzing and I knew instantaneously it was going to be one hell of a weekend. The first day I stayed up 24 hours and didn't get to bed until 9.30am, which some of you may think crazy, but it was Jen Tilly and Sam Trickett who kept playing for 30 hours and Luke 'FullFlush' Schwartz who endured for almost 40 hours. Definitely endurance is one characteristic needed in this poker world! I waited up for one reason and one reason only, just so I could see Tony G ride into the casino on his bike! I was indeed nervous to meet Tony G at first, but as I had been introduced to his 'dolls' prior to actually meeting him, I felt a little at ease and was pleasantly surprised when I finally met him by his very dry humour and comical outlook on life!
The Big Game Live ended being a hugely successful event, with thousands of viewers logging onto PokerNews to check out the live stream and vote off the players whether or not they seem to be keeping hold of their chips. There was one hand in the tournament in particular that was so exciting to watch. I won't give it away too much, but just take a look at the look on Martins Adeniya's face and it says it all.
After this hand, Tony G just seemed to sky rocket and ended up unanimously the Event's clear winner as he made a profit of almost £150k. An amount I am still finding it hard to get to grips with after around 20 hours of work. Some of the others weren't quite so lucky, but I'm sure as Arnie said, they will be back.
After the success of the live streaming and interactivity of viewers at The Big Game Live, I really feel this is something we will see a lot more of at poker events in the future. The future is changing and evolving in terms of this technology and it really is something to embrace with open arms. I also made a video about the 'Behind the Scenes' which shows just how clever all this emerging new technology is, so take a look!
And now for me, its pack my bags time again. This time I'm bringing lots of elasticated-waist dresses. Why you may ask? Its EPT San Remo! Pizza and Poker time in Italy and I cannot wait!!
