Portuguese businessman Fernando Brito continued his steady advance towards the EPT Player of the Year title at EPT Snowfest last week by capturing another 300 points in the €1k NL Turbo Bounty “8 Max” event.
It seems that grabbing points at the tail-end of an event is a Brito specialty and so is success in the Turbo Bounty. This is a favourite format for Brito who has won three of these, been runner-up once and nominally won the Snowfest event although only earned third place points as the last three players cut a deal.
Overall, Brito’s performance in Season 7 has been nothing short of spectacular. The 51-year-old father-of-four has played all but one EPT to date and has cashed in at least one event per stop including sixth place in the EPT London Main Event. He also side-tracked in the middle of the Season to play the NAPT LA event in November – where he won a super-satellite and was runner-up in a $1k side event.
Brito’s nearest rival now is Russian Konstantin Puchkov who, thanks to a runner-up finish in the Snowfest €1k NL event, has leap-frogged John O’Shea and Dario Alito to grab second place. However Puchkov is still some 1,420 points behind Brito’s extraordinary 3,750 total.
Although POY seems pretty much in the bag, it’s still a very close race in the Omaha, Mixed Games and Heads-Up Awards and there are plenty of opportunities left for surprise upsets and late dashes for glory. The current leaders are Matthew Ashton (Mixed Games), Dario Alioto (Omaha) and Diogo Veiga (Heads-Up) but points are extremely close in all these Awards and we still have three events to go.
The top contenders for the Mixed Games Award are Matthew Ashton, Dario Alioto, PokerStars Team Online’s Anders Hoyer Berg and John O’Shea. Although there are enough points available for others to have a stab, only these four have shown consistent results.
In the Omaha Award, it’s set to be a tough fight between Italian Alioto or Irishman O’Shea. However nothing’s set in stone just yet and a large pack is chasing these two front-runners.
Meanwhile, the Heads-Up Award is still wide open and any player in the top ten has a reasonable chance of taking it down.
What is very clear at this stage is that EPT Berlin is going to be crucial for Award points – and any player in either the PLO or Heads-Up top ten would be mad to miss this chance to lap up extra points.
EPT Best Country Award
In the Best Country Award Belgium has come from virtually nowhere to steal top spot. Belgians put on a stunning show at Snowfest with four of their nine players not only making the money, but finishing in the top 11. All this from a country which wasn’t even eligible before now for having too few cashes. Main Event runner-up Kevin Vandersmissen, Friend of PokerStars Pierre Neuville plus finalists Koen de Visscher and Philip Meulyzer have helped give Belgium its 18.37% score and put them in the lead. It is still a close race however as Romania enjoyed a similarly successful Snowfest. There were 11 Romanians in the field and five cashed, securing runner-up spot for Romania.
EPT Best Online Qualifier
EPT 6 Best Online Qualifier Pierre Neuville is back in no uncertain terms and his impressive performance at EPT Snowfest – he came 11th in the Main Event – means he now has another 324 points and is only 380 points behind leader Martin Jacobson. There are still 300 online points available to collect before the end of the season (100 for each online qualification) so – like last season – it’s set to be a very close race. As it is, last season’s runner-up Kevin MacPhee is also within reach for this year’s Award. He is currently eighth with 1,000 points. To add to the excitement, all three have won seats for Berlin.
