Germany’s Benny Spindler has won the EPT London Main Event and the massive £750,000 winner’s prize for doing so after outlasting a crowd in 691 in the English capital.
This is Spindler’s third live victory in a major poker tournament but his winnings dwarf the €18,140 and €49,350 he was awarded for his wins in €200 buy-in event in 2009 and his most recent win in a €10,000 single rebuy event at EPT Tallinn. The 26-year old has had to endure some major disappointments in recent years, finishing in third place of the 2009 PCA Main Event and more recently he finished second to Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier in the €25,000 High Roller event at the EPT Grand Final.
Spindler started the eight-handed final table third in chips but after two hours of play he won a massive pot that saw him propelled to chip leader with a huge stack of 9,600,000 chips. The tournament was being played seven handed due to Miroslav Benes’ earlier departure and the blinds were 30,000/60,000/5,000a when Mattias Bergstrom made it 150,000 to play from under the gun. Spindler called from the button but Martins Adeniya squeezed from the big blind and three-bet to 475,000. Bergstrom got out of the way but Spindler was going nowhere and he moved all in. Adeniya called and the players revealed their hands, Spindler pocket tens and Adeniya ace-king. The board ran out Jc-8c-3h-2s-Jh and Adeniya was sent to the rail whilst Spindler got busy stacking up his new found chips.
From there Kevin Iacofano, Bergstrom, Juan Maniel Pastor and Andreas Klebanov were sent packing, setting up an exciting clash between Spindler (13,490,000 chips) and Steve “MrTimCaum” O’Dwyer (7,145,000). However, any thoughts of an epic encounter between the two talented players were soon dashed as the heads-up battle was over in just a few hands. O’Dwyer won the first couple of hands but he committed his entire stack as a huge underdog shortly afterwards. Spindler raised to 225,000, O’Dwyer three-bet to 725,000 only to see Spindler come over the top again with a raise to 1,725,000. O’Dwyer then moved all in for around 7,500,000 but knew he was in bad shape when Spindler snap-called. The American showed KcJc but was badly dominated by the AcKd of the 26-year old German. Spindler paired his ace on the Ad-8d-7c flop and when the turn and river were the Jh and 6s respectively, O’Dwyer was eliminated and Spindler had become the EPT London Main Event Champion!
Final table payouts
1st: Benny Spindler: £750,000
2nd: Steve O’Dwyer: £465,000
3rd: Andreas Klebanov: £265,000
4th: Juan Manuel Pastor: £200,000
5th: Mattias Bergstrom: £155,000
6th: Kevin Iacofano: £120,000
7th: Martins Adeniya: £86,350
8th: Miroslav Benes: £64,000
