La table finale de l'EPT Deauville à  suivre en streaming live ce samedi !

La table finale du Main Event de l'EPT Deauville a débuté au Centre International. L'action sera à suivre dès ce samedi 9 février à midi en streaming live : vous pouvez visionner la TF sur PokerStarsLive avec les commentaires en français ou sur PokerStars TV avec les commentaires en anglais.

Le résumé du Day 5

La composition de la table finale :

Siège 1 : Joseph El Khoury (Liban) 1,710M (21 BB)
Siège 2 : Jeffrey Hakim 895 k (Liban) (11 BB)
Siège 3 : Enrico Rudelitz (Allemagne) 2,690M  (33 BB)
Siège 4 : Franck Kalfon (France) 1,105M (13 BB)
Siège 5 : Robert Romeo (Belgique) 1,440M (18 BB)
Siège 6 : Walid Bou Habbib (Liban) 3,835M (47 BB)
Siège 7 : Noel Gaens (Belgique) 1,720M (21 BB)
Siège 8 : Rémi Castaignon (France) 9,900M (123 BB)

Le payout restant à distribuer : 

Vainqueur : 770.000€ 
Runner-up : 475.000€ 
3e : 275.000€ 
4e : 215.000€ 
5e : 165.000€ 
6e : 125.000€ 
7e : 87.800€ 
8e : 60.000€

Les bios des joueurs (en anglais) :

Seat 1: Joseph El Khoury, 41, Beirut, Lebanon - 1,710,000 

Travel agent Joseph El Khoury is one of 15 Lebanese players who competed at EPT Deauville and there are still three left – taking them from 1.92% of the field on Day 1 to 37.5% for the final. Lebanon is the current EPT Country of the Year. Like his fellow countrymen, Jeffrey Hakim and Walid Bou-Habbib, El Khoury is an EPT regular who has played around 20 EPTs in the last five years. He has cashed twice, both times in Prague, but his best live result before now was fifth place at WPT Cyprus last summer. That give him a $65,770 payday but he’s guaranteed at least €60,000 here in Deauville.

Seat 2: Jeffrey “jeff710” Hakim, 26, Beirut, Lebanon - 895,000 

Since playing his first EPT in 2008, serial qualifier Jeff Hakim has attended around 30 EPTs. He said: “I almost always win my seat online, but now I come regardless, even if I don’t qualify. I’m not going to miss any EPTs.” Hakim’s first EPT Main Event cash was at EPT Snowfest in Austria in Season 6, and his best result so far – out of six EPT cashes - was 16th at EPT Berlin in Season 7. He said: “I’ve definitely won more money online (he won the PokerStars 500 in 2008 for $91,500) but winning a live event means everything. I don’t think I will ever move on from poker, I won’t feel complete as a player, until I’ve won a major title.” He is the short stack going in to the final but he also started Day 5 as virtually the shortest stack – and then managed to turn 24 big blinds into more than 1.7 million in the space of 90 minutes.

Seat 3: Enrico Rudelitz, 25, Freisein/Saarland, Germany - 2,690,000 

Chemistry student Rudelitz has been playing poker for four years. He mainly plays tournaments but doesn’t consider himself a professional and Deauville is his first EPT cash. His normal milieu is smaller buy-in events like FPS Amneville in May 2012, where he finished seventh for €11,800, his biggest live cash so far. Rudelitz came to Deauville with a group of German friends including PokerStars.de Snowfest champion Marius Pospiech and Jonas Lauck who won the FPS High Roller Event here in Deauville. All these guys will be cheering him on from the rail at the Deauville final table.

Seat 4: Franck Kalfon, 46, Saint-Brice en Forêt, France - 1,195,000 

Franck Kalfon, who runs a textile firm, has been a regular fixture in Paris cardrooms – the famous Aviation Club in particular – for the last ten years. At first a cash game player, his eighth place finish in the 2008 Grand Prix de Paris (for €39,330) convinced him to dedicate more time to tournaments. In addition to multiple wins in Paris events, he has made the money twice before at EPTs, both times in Deauville (39th in Season 6 for €14,700, 40th in Season 7 for €17,000). Reaching this year's final table represents the best result of his career. “I'm living a dream”, Kalfon commented. “I'll play to win “he added, not worried about being short-stacked.

Seat 5: Roberto Romeo, 41, Sambreville, Belgium – PokerStars qualifier - 1,440,000 

French-speaking Romeo started playing poker around 2007, first with friends and then online. Initially, he played just for fun but, as time went by, he started taking it more seriously. This is his first EPT but he didn't have to spend much to enter, having qualified on PokerStars in a €4 rebuy satellite. ”And I didn't take any rebuys, just the add-on”, he adds. Married with four children, Robert plans to buy a house and shower his family with presents if he wins – and would seriously consider taking up poker as a second job.

Seat 6: Walid Bou-Habib, 42, Beirut, Lebanon - 3,835,000 

When Walid Bou-Habib first appeared on the scene back in 2008 he came close to making the final table. That 19th place finish in the EPT Grand Final for €46,300 may have made him think it would be easy but it’s taken a further five years and Main Event cashes, including a very creditable 16th place at the PCA for $100,000, for that final table to appear. Understandably he’s thrilled.

“It’s a great pleasure, really, just to prove to myself that I can do it. It was always like a big wall that I could not cross. Now, I’m crossing it,” said Bou-Habib, an engineer in food science and technology by day. The Lebanese 'hobby' player is a serial online qualifier through PokerStars and has gone on to rack up $386,492 in live tournament cashes. Seventh place will guarantee him a career largest score but given the number of short stacks left in, he’s in rude health to go significantly deeper than that. He currently sits in second place with 3,835,000. Bou-Habib is married with two children (12 and 10).

Seat 7: Noël Gaens, 57, Heers, Belgium - 1,720,000 

This is Noël Gaens’s second EPT – he also competed in one of the first EPTs in Dortmund. He plays a whole lot of poker though, but is by no means a professional, running his own building firm with a staff of 40. He consider poker a hobby but it's lucrative and he’s enjoyed a lot of cashes in his "career".

Gaens has been playing poker since 1995 and used to travel frequently to Germany in the early years because poker wasn’t on offer in Belgian casinos. However poker is now way more popular in Belgium and Gaens is a regular cash game player at the PokerStars-affiliated Casino de Namur. On Day 2, Gaens tripled up (with trips over trips) and hasn't looked back since, although he admits he got lucky several times. Gaens says he isn't easily intimidated and isn't afraid of anyone at the final table. “I’m just going to play my own game,” he said.

Seat 8: Remi Castaignon, 29, Saint Aunix Lengros, France 

It's not very often that a player arrives at the final table holding more than 40% of the chips in play, but insurance broker Rémi Castaignon just accomplished this impressive feat with gusto, never losing his cool during a crucial Day 5 that saw him catching a few lucky breaks (including a massive KK vs AA suckout early during the day), eliminating several players in a row (including fellow countrymen Cyril André and Jean-Pierre Petroli) and displaying an overall excellent performance. Hailing from a tiny village in the Pyrenées, Castaignon has been playing poker since 2007, mostly online tournaments and satellites for big live events. Reaching the final table in Deauville is his best result to date.