The European Poker Tour had a successful visit to Dublin recently for its twelfth season with the main event title being won by Polish player Dzmitry Urbanovich for an impressive sum of €561,900. The action took place at the RDS from the 9th to the 21st February and attracted hundreds of poker fans from Ireland and much further afield.

Urbanovich topped a field of 605 players to claim the first place prize in Dublin, the first time the EPT had visited Dublin in eight years. The final battle took place between six players and the UK’s Rhys Jones was the first to be eliminated by his opponents, getting easily knocked out by Urbanovich. Greek player Ilios Kamatakis took fifth place, going home with a respectable €152,600. After this, Gilles Bernie took a huge chip lead and he easily knocked out the final table’s only Irish player Patrick Clarke who fell foul of a weak ace, but claimed a decent prize of €193,650. He was followed immediately in the next hand by Kully Sidhu who taken a chance against Bernies with his ace-six versus Bernies fives, but he missed and had to settle for third place and a cash out of €250,300.

This left the game with two players locked in a tense head to head battle, Urbanovich and Bernies. Bernies is a 27 year old part-time poker player hailing from Germany and found himself up against Urbanovich who has had a fair bit of recent success on the poker felt. He won four side events at the EPT Malta last year, finished second place in the €100,000 Super High Roller Grand Final, and started off Season 12 EPT with another super high roller second place prize in Barcelona.

The head to head which ensued between Bernies and Urbanovich stretched out over a number of hours. Initially, Urbanovich took a substantial lead when he laid down a flush draw, but Bernies climbed back into contention. Urbanovich still had the lead but Bernies was proving himself to be an excellent grinder when he got himself back into an even position. The game took a break at this point for half an hour, but the pair returned to finish out the final. The game play went on for quite a while before Urbanovich confidently took the lead for the last time as Bernies laid down a flush draw into Urbanovich’s trip aces and hit the flush on the river, but in doing so his card ended up giving Urbanovich a full house which he used to finish out the game and claim the top prize. The skilled Bernies could not deny the young Polish rising poker star the Dublin title despite his impressive lead throughout the game.

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