The eighth stop of the European Poker Tour (EPT) has been contested as several of the world’s leading poker players descended on Denmark with the EPT Copenhagen.

It was a Finnish teenager named Jens Kyllonen who kept his cool to win the main event and take home over £770,000 in prize money.

The EPT Copenhagen Main Event had a big starting field of 462 players with 112 of these qualifying online at PokerStars.com.  Over half of the field were from Scandinavia with 276 entrants.

Scandinavian players also dominated the final table line-up.  There were two Danish players hoping to win on home soil – Jonas Klausen and Rasmus Hede Nielsen.  They were joined by Peter Hedlund and Petter Pettersson of Sweden, Anders Langset of Norway as well as Jussi Nevanlinna and Jens Kyllonen of Finland together with the only non-Scandinavian to make it to the final table, Eric Larcheveque of France.

Scandinavian poker players are known for their aggressive style of poker play and the final table lived up to that stereotype.

Jonas Klausen and Eric Larcheveque didn’t last long and went out in eighth and seventh place respectively.  Klausen’s reward was £70,485 and Larcheveque earned just under £100,000.  Larcheveque’s exit ensured there would be a Scandinavian winner.
Rasmus Hede Nielsen had been at the top of the chip count with Langset in the early stages of the final table but he lost out in an exchange with Langset and didn’t recover, so he was eliminated in sixth place.  However, he was the best performing Danish player and earned £125,288 for his efforts.
Peter Pettersson was next to bow out in fifth place earning £159,212 in the process.  Nevanlinna of Finland was then eliminated into fourth place for a £193,143 prize.
Down to three-handed play, Kyllonen captured the lead from Langset by winning a big pot.  Only a few hands later Kyllonen then eliminated Langset into third place.  Langset’s reward was £253,162.

So the heads-up was a clash between Finland and Sweden as Kyllonen started the final with triple the number of chips of his opponent Peter Hedlund.  It was also youth against experience as Hedlund had already made it to an EPT final table in his career against 19 year-old Kyllonen who was making his final table debut.

Kyllonen’s advantage was too great for Hedlund to claw back though, and Kyllonen clinched victory only a few hands into the heads-up with pocket jacks.  Hedlund’s runners-up prize was £435,972.  The final table took just over five hours to complete as the crowd enjoyed watching some aggressive poker.

Kyllonen now has the money to enter more big time poker tournaments and has a bright future poker career ahead of him at the age of 19.

Print version