Giving the hometown Portuguese crowd something to cheer for Antonio Matias was able to capture his first major tournament victory by outlasting the 322 would-be hopefuls, including some of the top poker pros in the world.

Matias bucked the current trend of young online poker stars winning the championship events around the globe: The 54 year-old travel agent walks away with the over 400,000 euro first place prize-money, and the prestigious honor of being a European Poker Tour champion.

Entering the final table as a monstrous chip-leader Matias relinquished the chip-lead on multiple occasions, but was able to weather the up and down storm that is tournament poker, and found himself ahead in chips when the following hand came up during heads-up play:

On a flop of J78 both players, Matias and Pierre Neuville, got their money into the middle, but Matias had the big edge when he turned over 78 to Pierre’s JT: Matias filled up on the turn, so Neuville needed one of the two Jacks remaining in the deck to take the hand: When the river proved to be am innocuous 2, Matias and the entire Portuguese contingent broke into cheer.

Tags: EPT, EPT News, PokerStars, pokerstars portugal, pokerstars.com

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