What better way to start 2008 than with the biggest non-WSOP field ever for a major competition?

      Somehow, someone, somewhere, had the crazy idea that poker players might like the odd tournament or two in glamourous tropical locations. So it was, with a weary heart, that I grudgingly accepted the arduous task of travelling over to the Bahamas for the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, now also known as EPT Bahamas.

    Yes, the Bahamas are now part of the European Poker Tour, though you’d be hard pressed to find anyone here quibbling with this. Geography traditionalists amongst the sunbathing and water- sliding alumni tended to be few and far between in this gigantic behemoth of a casino, which had echoes of Las Vegas’ Rio, right down to the cardroom area.

    A whopping 1,136 players had stumped up the $8,000 to play the tournament, yet the impressively spacious room at the Atlantis on Paradise Island in Nassau easily managed to accommodate them all for the two starting days, with room to spare in-between the PokerStars banner-draped walls. The number of participants here was not a surprise, it was the age of them all that gave one pause – half the field looked to be barely two decades old and seemingly would’ve been more at home in the teen comedy Superbad than at a major poker tournament. 

I Busted Out – So What?

The great thing about this tournament in the Bahamas, was er...that it was in the Bahamas and that if you ended up busting out, you could still say, “Hey, well, at least I’m in the Bahamas,” before scurrying off to go snorkelling or swimming with dolphins. Two people who were able to sunbathe for perhaps more time than they would have preferred were Erik Seidel, whose face no doubt looked like a smacked bottom after holding 6-5 on a K-6-6 flop and finding that he was up against pocket cowboys, but it did give him more time to get a tan on the pasty face of his.

      Also finishing early was Dortmund EPT winner and former owner of the largest comic book collection in Norway, Andreas Hoivold, whose flopped straight was beaten by a rivered flush before he was coin-flipped out of the competition.

      The earliest exit had to be on Eidsvig’s table. In the first hand, one player had pushed on the river with a Q-10-5-2-x board against a 2,000 bet for his entire 20k stack. His opponent obligingly called with a set of queens, making him do the walk of shame very early as his former tablemates sat there as shell-shocked as he was.

    The biggest story of the first day was the rise and subsequent fall of Gavin Griffin, an early pace-setter. He’d rocketed up to almost 150k very early, only to lose a big pot with A-K to 6-6 on an A-Q-6 board. This seemed to set him on wild tilt and he ended up bluffing or calling decent amounts of his stack off before ending up on the rail.

    Whilst more than half the field ended up being eliminated on the two first days, there was a familiar name near the top of the leaderboard, Steve Paul-Ambrose, a winner of the PCA a couple of years back. Also around the top 20 was Bertrand Grospellier, also known as ElkY, bidding to make it back-to-back EPT wins for the French. Further down the list there were many very good players still in the comp. Daniel Negreanu, Johnny Lodden and Barry Greenstein were all around there with decent chips.

      Bill Edler, for whom 2007 must have been the best year of his poker life, winning both a WSOP bracelet and a WPT, suffered a rather nasty start to his 2008. Victor Ramdin had raised preflop, Bill reraised and Ramdin felt weakness and decided to go for the re-resteal with his 5-4. Edler was not stealing, though, and quickly called for his stack with kings. A flop of 8-7-6 suddenly left him needing runner-runner, which failed to materialise and the Team PokerStars player claimed another scalp. 

He Is Rizen

Day 3 saw Eric ‘Rizen’ Lynch as the new chip leader, with ElkY once again not far behind. EPT Baden winner Julian Thew had also shot up there into the top five, having started the previous day as a short stack, but a mixture of luck, coin-flipping skills and patience had put him amongst the big boys. New names near the top of the list also included William Thorsson, one of the best Swedish players around, and David ‘The Dragon’ Pham, the super-aggressive player with a tournament record to match anyone’s.

      One-hundred-twenty players were paid in a very flat payout structure that saw the bubble burst incredibly quickly when Frederik Agersnap, presumably trying to take advantage of the bubble, pushed all in with 10-2 on K-7-4 board, only to run into Peter Jetten’s K-Q.

      With just five tables left on Day 4, David ‘The Dragon’ Pham was now the chip leader and was relentless in attacking others’ stacks. He suffered an early hit, losing almost half his 2 million stack to Joseph Elpayaa when the latter’s 9-9 held against A-Q. But redoubling his efforts, he rebuilt his stack back up before knocking out a couple more players before the final table including the last of the day, William Thorsson, trapping the Swede by cold-calling preflop with aces.

      This left The Dragon in a commanding position going into the final table. The chip counts:

Seat 1: Kris Kuykendall    2,150,000 

Seat 2: Christian Harder    905,000 

Seat 3: David Pham    7,390,000

Seat 4: Bertrand Grospellier    3,060,000 

Seat 5: Joseph Elpayaa    2,755,000 

Seat 6: Craig Hopkins    1,770,000 

Seat 7: Richard Fohrenbach    1,855,000 

Seat 8: Hafiz Khan    2,560,000

       With $150,000 for eighth place and a cool $2 million for the winner, every pot and every decision was going to matter, but David Pham was the clear favourite. A fellow journalist told me that on three separate occasions, well-known players have named The Dragon as someone they really hate playing against, as you never know where you are against him.

    Fohrenbach was out first. He’d lost a few chips before doubling through Elpayaa with jacks against tens, and the very next hand he had jacks again, reraising ElkY’s opening bet. ElkY instantly set him in, and Fohrenbach made the call and found himself racing against ace-king. A cowboy was the first card out and suddenly the Frenchman was vying with Pham for the chip lead. ElkY followed this up by knocking out the short stack, Christian Harder, with jacks against sevens with a third knave on the flop for good measure, and suddenly the last Team PokerStars player was steaming ahead faster than a TGV train.

      ElkY’s aggression continued, but he began to catch a large amount of cards that deceptively showed his image to be more aggressive than it probably was at that point. A late position raise was met by a big reraise all in from Joe Elpayaa, but once again ElkY was holding the goods, this time A-Q against K-J. Pham might have started off as the star and the favourite, but Monsieur Grospellier was stealing the show!

    Pham and ElkY continued to tangle, especially after Pham had regained some chips after knocking out Craig ‘The Apple’ Hopkins with tens against K-8. No doubt the Frenchman saw that despite Pham’s decreased chip count, he was still a major danger, no matter how small the stack.

    Eventually Pham was all in on a 5-K-Q-J board, both he and ElkY having checked the flop before Pham moved in over the top of ElkY’s turn bet. ElkY agonised for ages before saying, “I have to call.” We suspected that Pham would turn over a big draw, but no! It was ElkY who held the A-2 for a flush draw and gutshot, which he needed to hit because Pham had two pair with his Q-5. With 11 outs in the deck, ElkY caught the beautiful 7 for the flush, eliminating arguably his toughest rival remaining in the tournament.  

Battle for Second?

At first it looked like it was going to be a battle for second place between the Americans, Kuykendall and Khan, but the latter managed to score a major coup when he went all in with kings preflop against Kuykendall’s A-Q in what could be considered a cooler three-handed. Hafiz Khan then finished off his opponent with A-7 against K-Q, setting himself up with about 9 million chips to ElkY’s 13 million.

    Like an episode of ER, the heads-up final was bloody but brief.

      ElkY won a couple of decent pots before it seemed that Khan just snapped and made a major shove over the top of ElkY’s raise, only to be instantly called by the Frenchman’s eights, and Khan’s 9-3 offsuit was in major trouble.

      A raggy 2-5-7-4-4 board meant that Bertrand Grospellier had done it and finally banished any lingering memories he might have had after getting heads-up in Copenhagen last year before losing.

      He becomes the first member of Team PokerStars (the EPT sponsor) to win an EPT event, saying, “The entire trip has been one thrilling experience after another – and now I’m returning home as the 2008 PCA champion.

      “This was definitely one of the hardest tournaments I’ve ever played. It was a very tough field with a lot of online American qualifiers who played really well. But I really wanted this title and I would have been very disappointed not to win.”