A couple of weeks ago, Ludovic Lacay's Facebook friends were subject to a polite request. "Until new notice poker is going terrible," Lacay wrote on his status update. "Please stop asking :)" The smiley face could not disguise the fact that here was a poker player running bad. But those...more

Lynn Gilmartin talks to the new EPT9 Sanremo champion Ludovic Lacay about a long day at the table. The Frenchman, who looked content in front of his stack of chips and winning hand, spoke about his performance, his expectations, running good and playing to his best. We also saw...more

Jason Lavallee talks to Lynn Gilmartin about how the final table is progressing - in his view badly - and about his unorthodox preparations for the day - largely drinking and sleeping, as well as a plate of spaghetti. Lavallee also talks about the dominance of Ludovic Lacay in...more

EPT9 Sanremo has reached its final table, the eight players who will return tomorrow to decide the winner of the €800,000 first prize. The tone for the day was set early, when the life-force of Inge Forsmo, vivid before today, was finally snuffed out in a massive couple of hands....more

The European Poker Tour event in Sanremo is one of a number major poker festivals in Italy organised by Pagano Events, the family business of the Team PokerStars Pro Luca Pagano. Luca and his father Claudio have run the business since the mid 1990s, arranging poker tournaments on cruises and...more

Ludovic Lacay has been spending his mornings this week playing tennis and his afternoons and evenings at the poker table, steadily moving up to within the top three in chips in the main event. At the last break, Lynn Gilmartin caught up with Lacay to get an update on his...more

At some point today Jason Tompkins may just have felt he was beginning to own this main event. The Irishman was among the first to break the million mark, then wasted little time turning that into 1.5 million before his stack peaked tonight at 2,423,000. That puts Tompkins, who...more

Giada Fang, an Italian member of Team PokerStars Online, was out on the racing track yesterday swapping cards for karts. Today Fang is playing in a €1,000 ladies' invitational on the TV set that will host the EPT Sanremo final table this Thursday. One player will bundle €800,000 into a...more

If you drew up a list of the last 30 players at EPT Sanremo, then put an asterisk beside the name of everyone who has never cashed in the main event of an EPT festival, you would be looking at 17 little stars. You might think, though, that at least...more

People in poker often use the word "polarizing", typically to describe a bet that represents either a bluff or the nuts. But EPT Sanremo can often be a polarizing tournament: either it is painfully slow as players Hollywood on every decision, or it is terrifyingly fast as they think: "Eff...more

Chip leader coming into today was Inge Forsma who talked to Lynn Gilmartin during a pause in the bubble play about his remarkable progress. Forsma was the first to admit, when he spoke to the PokerStars Blog yesterday, that he isn't the most patient of players, having got his...more

Often the most revealing aspect of bubble play is not the all-in hands themselves, which usually end with a double-up for the player with aces, but the players with the short stacks who play, and live, hand by hand. One such player was Nadir Yusupov. The Russian seemed to...more

EPT9 Sanremo is coming nicely to the boil. After starting the day with 430 players, we sent more than half of them spiraling out to the side events or the restaurants, leaving us with about 160 chasing the €800,000 first prize - or at least an €8,000 min-cash should they...more

There's a café across the street from the Casino in San Remo called "Sabrina." You can sit outside in the sunshine while the waiters, either blond and tattooed or impossibly hairy bring you ice cream, sandwiches and drinks, while inside their boss polishes the zinc bar. It's a popular...more

The cream is rising to the top today at EPT Sanremo, with a number of the game's biggest names starting to make their presence felt on the leader board. Pius Heinz and Nacho Barbero lead the Team PokerStars Pro charge, but Jude Ainsworth is another of the red spades...more

The opening day of EPT Sanremo is now at an end, and Sam Trickett leads after a day that was decidedly more engaging that its predecessor. After yesterday's sedentary atmosphere, Day 1B started with drama and continued in the same manner until about 270 of its 477 starters remained....more

Every now and again on the European Poker Tour, a young Italian player appears from absolutely nowhere, plays like a man or woman possessed and suddenly has a stack of chips so large they need a step-ladder to reach the top. This move is known as "doing a Minieri" after...more

Chris Moneymaker is one of an extraordinarily strong showing from Team PokerStars Pro this afternoon, sitting as we enter the last level with 110,000. As he explains to Lynn Gilmartin, he managed to flop quads and get paid off earlier on, which has allowed him to get his head down...more

It's another glorious late summer day in Sanremo, a town that rejects autumn and chooses a late summer instead. The sun is at its hottest in these moments before play starts. The town long ago voted against installing shade making it a punishing walk from even the nearest hotel....more

We have reached the end of Day 1A of EPT9 Sanremo and although this was not the most dramatic ten hours of poker the casino has ever seen, that fact itself is part of the tournament's success. In the past, we have known snaking queues for registration and long-delayed starts,...more

Ana Marquez came to EPT Sanremo this week with nothing but excitement, expectation and fond memories. This was the town in which she first met her now-boyfriend Bryn Kenney and it also boasts her (and everyone else's) favourite restaurant. Not only that, but Marquez is on the crest of a...more