Whilst the eyes of the media were fixated on Alexandre Gomes at the final table of the EPT Grand Final and his quest to become only the third poker player in history to win the coveted Triple Crown of titles, the little-known Ivan Freitez of Venezuela who took everyone by surprise and took down the title.

Freitez describes himself as a professional poker player but one who still runs his own transport business. Previous to the EPT Grand Final, Freitez had cashed in two European Poker Tour events, a 16th place finish at the recent EPT Copenhagen was followed by a 55th place at EPT Snowfest. His largest cash was for $108,170 when he won a $1,000 buy-in tournament at the 2010 Venetian Deep Stack Extraviganza, now he has won almost 20 times that amount!

As mentioned the eyes of the media and the poker fans on the rail were watching Alexandre Gomes like a hawk as he stood a very realistic chance of writing himself into the poker history books. If he was to do so he would have a real battle on his hands as he started the final table with just 20 big blinds and in the need of a double up sooner rather than later. Unfortunately for the Brazilian it never came and around two hours into play, with Andrew Li already eliminated, Gomes open-shoved for 1,200,000 from the small blind (blinds 50,000/100,000/10,000a) and he was instantly called by Eugene Yanayt in the big blind. Gomes turned over 8s7s and was in dire straights against the TcTd of Yanayt. The final board ran out Kc-5c-3c-8h-5s and Gomes was eliminated in seventh place to a round of applause.

Freitez then went on the moth of all heaters and was responsible for the exits of four of the remaining players! His first victim was actually Yanayt, the Venezuelan making a great call with pocket nines after facing an all in three-bet with what turned out to be a pair of fives. After Torsten Brinkmann had sent Spanish pro Juan Maceiras to the rail Freitez got back to business and busted out Andrey Danilyuk with his Ad9c against the 3s3d of the Russian when the former hit an ace on the river..

He then used ace-nine again to bust out Tamas Lendvai, who was holding a 9s9d to take the tie to heads-up where he held a monstrous 16,115,000 to 4,505,000 chip lead over Brinkmann. The pair did battle for just under 40 minutes before the run-good of Freitez was finally too much to overcome. Freitez min-raised on the button to 320,000 and when Brinkmann three-bet shoved for around 3,000,000 chips the Venezuelan snap-called with Td9d, thats correct ten-high, and need to improve against the AhKc of Brinkmann. And improve he did as the final board ran out 5h-2s-9d-6d-8c to eliminate Brinkmann in second place and award the win to Freitez.

Final table payouts

1st: Ivan Freitez: €1,500,000 2nd: Torsten Brinkmann: €900,000 3rd: Tamas Landvai: €550,000 4th: Andrey Danilyuk: €400,000 5th: Juan Maceiras: €315,000 6th: Eugene Yanayt: €250,000 7th: Alex Gomes: €185,000 8th: Andrew Li: €130,000

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