39 year-old Julian Thew from Nottingham has won the Pokerstars European Poker Tour Baden Classic event in Austria.
He saw off a field of 282 players including top professionals such as the new WSOP Europe Main Event Champion Annette Obrestad, Ram Vaswani, Barry Greenstein, Marcel Luske, Hevad “RainKhan” Khan and 2005 European Poker Tour Baden Champion Patrik Antonius.
The buy-in for the event was 8,000 euros, with a total prize fund of 2,143,200 euros. Thew won 670,800 euros for his victory as he claimed his first major title.
Many big names fell by the wayside as the competition reached the final table. The players left for the final table were, Vladimir Poleschuk of Russia, the Americans Thomas Fuller and Ted Lawson, Thierry Van den Berg of the Netherlands, Switzerland’s Anton Allemann, the German Manfred Hammer, Denes Kalo of Hungary and of course Julian Thew of the UK.
Vladimir Poleschuk was chip leader going into the final table and he continued his form by eliminating two players in the first two hands. First to go was Anton Allemann. He won 60,000 euros for finishing eighth. The American, Ted Lawson was next to be eliminated in the following hand and he finished seventh to take home a prize of 83,600 euros.
Poleschuk continued to play well to take out Manfred Hammer and looked on course to win the title. Hammer won 105,000 euros for his sixth place finish. However, the play slowed down and it was 30 minutes before the next player headed for the exit. Thierry Van den Berg finished fifth winning prize money of £132,500 euros as he busted out to Thomas Fuller.
With four players left the chip counts were, Vladimir Poleschuk 988,000, Julian Thew 693,000, Thomas Fuller 690,000 and Denes Kalo 469,000 chips. Thew began to take charge of the game as play continued with some skilful tactics as he took over the chip lead. Thew had a say in the next player to be eliminated Thomas Fuller, whose fourth place earned him 160,820 euros.
With three players left Poleschuk had been relegated to third position. The chip counts going into the three man action were; Thew ahead with 1,816,000, Kalo on 750,000 and Poleschuk on 225,000. Poleschuk eventually busted out to Kalo and finished in third position claiming his prize of 225,000 euros.
Therefore the final heads up action was between Julian Thew and Denes Kalo. Thew was still in the lead going into the heads up action and he never looked back as he took the title after an hour’s play. Denes Kalo took the consolation prize of 375,000 euros for finishing as runner-up.
The European Poker Tour Baden Classic is Thew’s first major title and as well as taking the trophy and 670,800 euros, he has qualified for the European Poker Tour Grand Final in Monte Carlo.
