Just this week, Dan Smith booked his fifth win of 2012, by winning the EPT Barcelona €50,000 Super High Roller. Smith bested a field of 55 players to win €962,925 (post two-player deal), bringing his 2012 total to $3.3 million. That's pretty impressive right? We caught up with Smith during...more

When the European Poker Tour went to Vienna in season one, try to guess how much the buy in was for the first event of the festival. Go on, have a stab. PAUSE...WAITS...GUESSING HAPPENING...CONTINUE If you said €80 then you almost certainly cheated. But you were also right. It's true:...more

Three days ago these Super High Rollers started playing with stacks of 250,000 chips and blinds of 500-1,000. Even to those cursed by peanut sized brains, that's a pretty straightforward big blind to stack size ratio calculation. (The starting stack here represented 25 2,500 150 237...er...250 big blinds.) Flash forward...more

The winner of the PokerStars Women Live tourney at EPT Barcelona is Liya Gerasimova. The Russian player made a remarkable final table comeback to take home €10,700 and the PokerStars Women trophy. At one point Liya had less than one big blind, but a three hand series of double-ups...more

Women's tournaments tend to be good humoured affairs, but this one in Barcelona is particularly pleasant, with the players chatting like friends as they play. I've just witnessed a cheery few hands that made the three remaining players giggle. Liya Gerasimova laughed the most - her happiness tinged with relief....more

The PokerStars party last night was loud, lively, and involved some clowns dressed in odd clothes. The clowns were the party entertainment, not the players, who were mostly all smartly dressed and wouldn't possibly clown around due to their poker commitments in the morning. The women who have returned...more

If anyone without an Irish lilt to their voice had said the following, they would be justly condemned for some terrible regional stereotyping. But the words actually came from the mouth of John O'Shea yesterday, who is as proudly Irish as proudly Irish gets. "If you put five Irish guys...more

As we said earlier this week, players have a tendency to smarten up as they go deep in an event, particularly when there are television cameras on hand to record their every move. Today is no different and presumably the switchboard at the Prague Hilton came alive this morning with...more

At times it has felt like the first main event of the new season has been headlined by Finnish players from the start. On day one Aku Joentausta held the lead. Then heads were turned by the return of Ilari Sahamies to live tournament poker. Then a third contender...more

Surprise winners are part and parcel of major poker tournaments, but they tend to be rarer in High Roller events. If a seasoned commentator had looked at the line-up for the final 12 of the €10,000 High Roller event in Barcelona today - a field including Andrew Lichtenberger, Jonathan Duhamel,...more

There is an awful lot to focus on in the tournament room this afternoon, including the circus stage of the main event final table, the one-last-hurrah insanity of the €5,000 six-max turbo, plus the tail end of another couple of events. It is easy to forget about the High...more

Today is the end of the beginning. It is 13 days since the first EPT festival of season nine began at Casino Barcelona and we have now reached the final hurdle. And what a grandstand finale we have lined up: two final tables, a combined prize pool of more than...more