Nicolas Chouity turned his monstrous chip lead into win at one of the major events in the poker calendar, the PokerStars EPT Grand Final. The winner's cheque was for €1.7 million.


Chouity started the final table with 40% of the chips and busted the other players one after the other, among them Herve Costa who gave a new meaning to "playing tight" by playing only 3 hands and finishing in 4th place for €500,000. Only Andrew Chen was sent to the rail by someone else, Austrian Josef Klinger who made it to heads up with Chouity.

Heads up lasted just 12 hands and it finished in a bad setup for Klinger when he got his chips in with 88 but bumped into Chouity's AA.

"I played my best, I ran good, everything went OK and I won," Chouity summed it up. Playing as "nicccc" on PokerStars, the Lebanese player won his ticket to the Grand Final at a $22 rebuy satellite. Previously he had only 4 cashes at live events, most notably €31,000 for 50th place at last year's Grand Final.

Sami "LarsLuzak" Kelopuro, who finished 12th at the event, talks about his hands at the event on his latest blog for Coinflip and mentions that he played some "sick hands" with Chouity. Read the entry here; while Sami thinks that overall Chouity was playing solid, he describes a hand where the future winner was too passive with AA against him.

1 - Nicolas Chouity LEB €1,700,000
2 - Josef Klinger AUT €1,000,000
3 - Dominykas Karmazinas LIT €700,000
4 - Herve Costa FRA€500,000
5 - Andrew Chen CAN €400,000
6 - Aleh Plauski BLR €300,000
7 - Roger Hairabedian FRA €200,000
8 - Mesbah Guerfi FRA €140,000
..
12 - Sami Kelopuro FIN €80,000

Season 7 of the European Poker Tour kicks off in Tallinn, Estonia on August 11.

Source: PokerStars Blog.