The 20th anniversary of the 2024 PokerStars European Poker Tour Barcelona saw the ever-historic €100,000 EPT Super High Roller conclude in electric fashion as Kayhan Mokri emerged the victor for the second year in a row.
Amongst the crowds of Casino Barcelona, Mokri repeated his own legacy, lifting another EPT Super High Roller Trophy on Spanish soil, this time to the tune of €1,372,420, nearly doubling the first-place prize money he claimed 12 months ago.
| Place | Player | Country | Prize |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kayhan Mokri | Norway | €1,372,420 |
| 2 | Seth Davies | United States | €895,000 |
| 3 | Sean Winter | United States | €616,600 |
| 4 | Jesse Lonis | United States | €457,400 |
| 5 | Santhosh Suvarna | India | €358,000 |
| 6 | Patrik Antonius | Finland | €278,400 |
"I'm playing a game that I love," said Mokri. "And once you do something you love, you often get very good at it, and you enjoy the moments. So it's super easy for me.”
"The people I play with are super friendly and great people. It's easy to have fun at the same time."
Kayhan Mokri's Meteoric Rise to Poker's Highest Stakes
Twenty-eight unique players coughed up the eye-watering pricetag of €100,000 to sit down and compete against the best and brightest stars in the game. However, once wasn’t enough for some, resulting in a total of 13 reentries, generating a final field size of 41 players and a mammoth prize pool of €3,977,820.
With six spots being paid and a minimum cash worth a massive €278,400, Day 2 expectedly saw a lengthy bubble between the final seven that went long into the early hours of Monday morning. The misfortune of this seismic money jump fell on the shoulders of the Frenchman Thomas Santerne, who crashed out in seventh place.
Santerne is best known for winning the €50,000 Super High Roller at this year's EPT Paris. However, on this occasion, the young professional failed to collect an additional PokerStars shard for his trophy cabinet.
Kayhan Mokri Breaks Through For a Trophy in the EPT Barcelona €100,000 Super High Roller
Just ten hours after the conclusion of Day 2, the final six were already back under the bright lights of the feature table as the race to a champion began.
Having won the €100,000 Super High Roller at EPT Monte Carlo just four months ago, the dream of back-to-back glory quickly came to an end for Patrik Antonius as he was the first departure of this final table. Antonius wisely reinvested his €1,967,440 win in Monaco as his finish today added another €278,400 to his ever-growing bankroll.
Following closely behind was Santhosh Suvarna’s departure in fifth place. Although the only player on the final table not to play poker professionally, Suvarna has firmly solidified himself among the sharks of the high-stakes scene. With an already impressive resume of results in six-figure buy-ins across the globe, this finish will make for yet another major final table in his poker career, including his second EPT final table of 2024, having won a €25K in Paris.
A dry spell of eliminations was ended when Seth Davies sent Jesse Lonis to the rail in fourth place. Lonis has had an explosive year on the felt and is currently ranked 1st on the Global Poker Index. With this final table, Lonis has solidified 2024 as his meteoric rise to stardom in the poker community.
Sean Winter’s hot run quickly turned cold on Level 22 as his triple barrel bluff was sniffed out by the hero call of Davies. With just two big blinds left behind the line, Winter’s departure was imminent, his last chips falling into the hands of the man who decimated his stack just one hand prior.
Kayhan Mokri Gets His Second EPT Barcelona Title in the €20,000 No-Limit Hold'em
However, Davies couldn’t put his newly acquired chips to work as he’d hoped, with the heads-up battle swiftly ended by the now two-time champion on the second hand of play. Davies found himself on the wrong side of a cooler as his flopped two pair fell behind the turned set of Mokri, ending his run in second place.
Although Davies couldn’t convert his Day 1 chip lead into an outright win, he carried the momentum from his $300,000 Super High Roller Bowl win in Cyprus for $3,206,000 two weeks ago into another world-class display.
Mokri’s turbulent run at the final table saw him turn the shortest stack among the final four into a chip lead, aided by back-to-back double-ups and the biggest bluff of the tournament. Mokri seamlessly converted his masterclass of a final table performance into an all-important win on one of the world's biggest stages.
