The inaugural Global Poker Masters World Cup of Poker championship this week attracted plenty of attention as eight teams representing major poker playing nations in Europe fought hard for supremacy until Italy claimed the honours.
The Italian team of Rocco Palumbo, Giuliano Bendinelli, Dario Sammartino, Mustapha Kanit and Andrea Dato swept all before them to end in a final against Russia, represented by Vitaly Lunkin, Ivan Soshnikov, Vladimir Troyanovskiy, Anatoly Filatov and Alex Bilokur.
The United Kingdom Team was eliminated in the knock-out sessions on Day One, whilst the United States fared rather better, finishing third on the overall leaderboard, ahead of fourth placed Team Germany, followed by Canada, Ukraine and France.
The event was made all the more exciting by the number of notable names and sheer talent around the tables, including Marvin Rettenmaier, Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier, Isaac Haxton, Patrick Bruel, Marc-Andre Ladouceur, Sylvain Loosli, Dan Smith, Eugene Katchalov, Ami Barer, Ole Schemion, Andrew Chen, George Danzer, Jonathan Duhamel, and Paul Tedeschi.
In the final round, the Italians had 404,900 chips vs. Team Russia’s 148,100 in a final that consisted of five heads-up matches involving all the players in the two finalist teams.
Despite the almost 3 to 1 chip deficit the Russians appeared confident and played with aggression, but they were unable to close the gap sufficiently for it to matter, and the Italians completed their victory with a Latin flourish, taking all the single heads up matches.