Every Player Who Has Won the PokerStars EPT Barcelona Main Event

Who won the biggest top prize at EPT Barcelona? Which surprising country has provided the largest number of Main Event winners in EPT Barcelona history? And who is the current reigning EPT Barcelona champion? Over the years, Barcelona has been the most successful stop on the European Poker Tour and we’ve got all the history you could ever need as the 19^th EPT Barcelona Main Event celebrates two decades of PokerStars action on the EPT.

* Denotes sole year as PokerStars Championships (PSC)

** Delayed series as a result of COVID-19 pandemic

The Early Winners

Back in 2004, the European Poker Tour (EPT) was born. The brainchild of John Duthie, the series of events was propose to rival or supplement the World Series of Poker (WSOP) and World Poker Tour (WPT), both of which dominated the market for live poker events in the United States. While the tour stuck to Europe, its events soon attracted the attention of poker fans the world over.

Presented by Duthie and Colin Murray, the event also featured the roving reports and post-elimination interviewing skills of the late Caroline Flack. In the opening event, it was the Swedish player Alexander Stevic who triumphed.

In 2004, the top prize was a mere $88,806. By 2005, French player Jan Boubli’s win was worth five times that amount as he raked in $472,894. Norway had their first winner in 2006 as Bjørn-Erik Glenne won $767,065, before the EPT Barcelona Main Event’s first million-dollar winner, Danish player Sander Lylloff, took home $1,299,570 in 2007.

Sebastian Ruthenberg won an astronomical $1.5m top prize the following year before the top prize plateaued with the series’ first American winner Carter Phillips ($943,568 in 2009) was followed by Swedish professional Kent Lundmark ($915,816 in 2010) and Martin Schleich ($943,568 in 2011).

The Glory Years

Five winners from different countries were perhaps the most celebrated – and rewatched – winners in EPT Barcelona Main Events. Belarussian Mikalai Pobal had a truly unique set-up when he won in 2012. Down to the final three against talented Finnish players Ilari Sahamies and Joni Jouhkimainen, Pobal took it much easier on the final break, rather than Sahamies and Jooukimainen, who took some cold drinks on as light refreshment. Returning to the final table, Pobal was a model of sobriety to win and it was well worth doing as by winning EPT Prague in December 2019, Pobal became only the second-ever two-time EPT Main Event winner after Victoria Coren-Mitchell.

In 2013, Britain’s Tom Middleton took the title and backed by poker legend Toby Lewis, deal discussions were helped along by the experienced Lewis, enabling Middleton to dominate the deliberations and then go on to win the title.

Wins for German player Andre Lettau (2014) and Indonesian John Juanda (2015) were followed by a stunning victory in 2016 for self-confessed ‘super fan’ of the EPT, Polish player Sebastian Malec. Down to the final two, Malec had it in good with the nut flush against Uri Reichenstein’s turned straight. Malec was all-in and awaiting Reichenstein’s call that would win Malec the event when the Polish player took the stunning option of leaving the table to sit among the crowd. Asking Reichenstein to fold ‘so I can go to the toilet’, Malec’s bizarre play somehow didn’t alert Reichenstein to the ruse and the Israeli player called to his own doom, as an ecstatic Malec ran back to the table to turn over the winning hand:

The Most Recent Champions

In recent years, the European Poker Tour has gone through many changes yet emerged from the other side a bigger and better tour than ever. In 2017, the controversial decision was made to rename the European Poker Tour to the new name of the PokerStars Championships (PSC). Suffice it to say that this rebranding wasn’t given the seal of approval by players or fans, and this decision was swiftly reversed in the following season.

It was the Swedish player Sebastian Sorensson who won the one and only PSC Barcelona Main Event for $1,095,696 but while the name changed – and then changed back again – the habit of the PokerStars creating seven-figure major title winners was a constant. Polish player Piotr Nurzynski (2018) took home $1,151,273, while Simon Brändström (2019) and Giuliano Bendinelli (2022) posted huge scores either side of the COVIS-19 pandemic.

Over the course of EPT Barcelona’s stirring history, a total of 11 countries have provided us with those 18 former champions. Perhaps surprisingly, the country with the most winners is Sweden with four champions, who had the first winner in Alexander Stevic and followed that victory up with wins for Kent Lundmark (2010), Sebastian Sorensson (2017) and Simon Brändström (2019).

The winner of the biggest top prize in EPT Barcelona history was the sole Italian champion Giuliano Bendinelli who won $1,655,276 in 2022 in the first EPT Barcelona Main Event since the COVID-19 pandemic. German professional Sebastian Ruthenberg banked an incredible $1,510,818 back in 2008, while the aforementioned fourth and latest Swedish winner Simon Brändström’s win in 2019 was worth $1,432,187.

Last year was one of the biggest EPT Barcelona Main Events in the two decades of trips to the Catalan coastal city, with French player Simon Wiciak claiming $1,259,247 in 2023 after making one of the best hero calls in European Poker Tour history.

Let’s hope we can look forward to more excitement such as this in 2024: