Prague is a city which these days is usually overrun by invading Brits on stag weekends.  However, this past week there was an invasion of a different kind as professional poker players from around the world descended on the Czech capital for the EPT Prague event.

The No Limit Hold’em Main event consisted of a big field of 570 players including the newly crowned WSOP champion Peter Eastgate and defending champion Arnaud Mattern.  

Now, in its second year, the 2008 title was won by Salvatore Bonavena of Italy.     

He made his way to the final table which also featured fellow Italians Francesco Ciriani and Massimo di Cicco along with Andrew Alan Chen, Francesco Cirrianni, Nasr El Nasr, Alexiou Konstantinos, Raul Mestre and Fredrik Nygard. 

At the beginning of the final table Bonavena had a head start on the other players by having the chip lead.

Although, it wasn’t plain sailing for Bonavena as he lost his chip lead then regained it on a couple of occasions throughout the final table play.

The first player to go to the rails was Raul Mestre of Spain.  He was followed by Nasr El Nasr who finished seventh and Swedish player Fredrik Nygard who was out in sixth place.

With five players left the Italians had much to cheer about as there were still 3 Italians left in the competition, but this was short-lived as Francesco Cirrianni was busted out in fifth place in an exchange with Andrew Alan Chen.

Greek player Alexiou Konstantinos was the next player to fall losing out to Bonavena, for a fourth place finish.  Andrew Alan Chen had done well to keep in the competition and reach the final three as he was the short stack at the beginning of the final table. 

Although the EPT was destined to get its first Italian champion at this event and so Chen went out in third place, with Bonavena again being the assassin.

That meant we had an all Italian heads-up final battle between Bonavena and di Cicco.  Bonavena had a strong chip advantage at the start of heads-up which he wasn’t going to surrender.  The heads-up lasted around 60 minutes and Bonavena clinched the title after calling for 8-7 top pair against a straight draw and overcard.

Salvatore Bonavena makes his little part of poker history by being the first Italian poker player to triumph in an EPT event.  He was awarded with the trophy, 774,000 euros and a place at the Monte Carlo EPT Grand Final next spring.

Here is how the final table finished with all of the players prize money for the event:
Salvatore Bonavena – 774,000 euros
Massimo di Cicco – 445,000 euros
Andrew Alan Chen – 257,000 euros
Alexiou Konstantinos – 199,000 euros
Francesco Cirrianni – 166,000 euros
Fredrik Nygard – 130,000 euros
Nasr El Nasr – 99,500 euros
Raul Mestre – 71,800 euros     

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