Nine players secured their place at the final table of the Partouche Poker Tour Main Event in Cannes on the weekend. The winner of the final, to be played "WSOP style" in late November, will walk away with 1 million euros.

In the chip lead is the Swedish pro Michael Tureniec followed closely by Cedric Rossi.

With a €8,500 buy-in, a field of 521 players and a prize pool of over €4 million, this is one of the largest events in the European poker calendar. The stops in the tour serve as satellites to the main event so there is an unusually high number of inexperienced players for an event of this size. Not surprisingly, the Finnish pro Juha Helppi (pictured) thinks there's a lot of value in an event like this. "Even the structure is excellent with deep stacks. This is my favourite event of the year," he said to Coinflip.com.

In his latest blog entry for Coinflip (read here), Sami "LarsLuzak" Kelopuro says the same thing and gives his view on French players in general: "As far as I've seen there are two kinds of French players. Others are crazy, they play every hand and try to win every pot. I think they are all busted within the first two days. The others play way too tight, they just wait for aces all day long." In the end, Sami himself went out in 19th place while Juha placed 14th.

The French November Niner Antoine Saout also made a deep run in the event. All remaining players have already secured a payday of €102,000.

Michael Tureniec 3 041 000
Cedric Rossi 2 793 000
Gianni Giaroni 2 318 000
Michel Janvier 1 997 000
Hassan Fares 1 595 000
Miika Puumalainen 1 296 000
Jean-Paul Paqualini 1 185 000
Wesley Pantling 895 000
Henri Kettunen 528 000