The World Poker Tour (WPT) has not only been busy with its CAD $5,300 WPT Playground Championship in Montreal, but across the pond, they wrapped their second edition of the €1,100 WPT Prime Paris Championship on Monday night.
That tournament attracted 1,242 entrants over five starting flights to Club Circus Paris and offered up a €1,192,320 (US $1,285,559) prize pool to the top 156 finishers. After three days of play, France’s Hugues “Hugo” Girard nearly went wire-to-wire at the final table to win the tournament for $183,294 and a seat into December’s 2024 WPT World Championship at Wynn Las Vegas.
According to live updates, it took 124 hands for the final table to go from eight down to two players, and then heads-up play lasted nearly as long. Girard closed things out on Hand #242 when Mathieu Goncalves jammed his short stack with king-nine and Girard called with king-seven. Two more sevens on the flop essentially sealed the deal, and Goncalves had to settle for second place and $126,279 in prize money.
It was a new career-high score for Girard, who had previously finished in second place in the 2024 Winamax Poker Tour Grande Finale Event #5: €500 NLH for $137,772. The Frenchman now has more than $770K in lifetime tournament earnings according to the Hendon Mob.
| Place | Player | Prize |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hugo Girard | €170,000 (~US $183,294) |
| 2 | Mathieu Goncalves | €117,120 (~US $126,279) |
| 3 | Kostya Zaks | €85,200 (~US $91,863) |
| 4 | Baptiste Audoli | €63,700 (~US $68,681) |
| 5 | Etienne Silva de Oliveira | €48,700 (~US $52,508) |
| 6 | Oleksii Ievchenko | €38,100 (~US $41,079) |
| 7 | Ludovic Amblard | €30,400 (~US $32,777) |
| 8 | Samuel Fournier | €24,500 (~US $26,416) |
The final table action was live-streamed on the Twitch, YouTube, and Facebook pages of PMU Poker on a security delay of 30 minutes each.
Others to cash the tournament were Kevin Garcia (10th - $17,251), Clement Kerrien (16th - $11,213), Sandrine Zeitoun (24th - $7,332), Andy Black (44th - $5,068), Omar Lakhdari (54th - $4,313), Thomas Parrin (73rd - $3,342), David Larson (77th - $3,342), and Antonin Teisseire (93rd - $3,019).
Another player to cash was WPT Global Ambassador Conor O’Driscoll, who lost a big one in Level 23 (25,000/50,000/50,000) when Kostya Zaks got his stack of 960,000 and in preflop holding the K♦J♦against the A♣7♥of O’Driscoll.
The A♥6♥3♦flop gave O’Driscoll a big lead but it evaporated when the 10♦appeared on the turn followed by the Q♦on the river to give Zaks a winning runner-runner flush.
Not long after, Zaks finished off O’Driscoll via the ultimate cooler. O’Driscoll found himself all in preflop for 1.6 million with pocket kings only to see Zaks tabled pocket aces. It looked as if O’Driscoll would exact revenge after flopping a set of kings, but Zaks was hot as evidenced by an ace on the river for a bigger set! O’Driscoll hit the rail in 31st place for $7,332.
The WPT is done in France for the time being, and will soon wrap up at Montreal’s Playground. After that, the tour will head to Florida for the $5,000 WPT bestbet Scramble Championship from November 15-19.
*Photos courtesy World Poker Tour (WPT)
