EPT3 GERMAN OPEN

GERMANY’S BIGGEST EVER POKER TOURNAMENT

Date: March 11, 2007
Venue: Casino Hohensyburg, Dortmund, Germany
Event: EPT3 German Open - sponsored by PokerStars.com
Buy-in: €5,000

The richest poker tournament ever held in Germany, the EPT German Open with a total prize fund of €2,317,100, ended Sunday night at the Hohensyburg Casino, Dortmund.

The four-day tournament, part of the European Poker Tour sponsored by PokerStars.com, attracted a record field of 493 players, each paying €5,000 to enter the event.

The €672,000 first prize went to professional poker player Andreas Hoivold. The 35-year-old former computer network specialist owned Norway’s largest comic book collection until six months ago, but sold the entire collection to fund a burgeoning poker career. In that time, he has already won over €300,000, and his victory in Dortmund takes his winnings close to €1,000,000.

Italy’s Christiano Blanco, 26, a football journalist from Rome, finished second (€380,000) and Germany’s Sebastian Ruthenburg was 3rd (€220,000). Ruthenburg, 23, a well-known German professional player from Hamburg, was one of nearly 100 players who won their seats at Dortmund on PokerStars, the world’s largest online card room.

The German Open was the first ever EPT event in Germany, and the first major European poker tournament to be covered by a live ‘webcast’, broadcasting via the internet to poker fans all over the world.

Amongst the contestants in Dortmund were Team Pokerstars players Katja Thater of Germany, Frenchman Bertrand ‘ElkY’ Grospellier and Noah ‘Exclusive’ Boeken of Holland.

As well as his prize, Hoivold wins a seat for the €10,000 EPT Monte Carlo Grand Final, Europe’s richest poker tournament, which starts March 28, 2007.

The next EPT event is the EPT Polish Open, Warsaw, March 14-17, 2007 - the first to be held in Poland. The five-day EPT Grand Final takes place at the Monte Carlo Bay Hotel & Resort in Monaco.