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Top 10 EPT Tournament Winners After 20 Years
With the PokerStars EPT Barcelona series that just wrapped up in Spain, the European Poker Tour celebrated its 20th anniversary in style.
Where It Started
The first EPT ever was in Barcelona was in 2004, which kicked off the inaugural season of the live poker tour. Longtime poker player John Duthie had the idea for the tour. Poker was booming at the time, as Chris Moneymaker had just won the World Series of Poker Main Event in 2003, and Duthie himself had just won the first-ever Poker Million tournament.
The first season started with the EPT Barcelona Open, a stop at Casino Barcelona that featured a €1K buy-in Main Event and several side events. That Main Event brought in 229 players, and Alexander Stevic won it for €80K. The tour then went to London, Dublin, Copenhagen ,Deauville, and Vienna, only to wrap the season in Monte Carlo. The entire season ran from mid-year 2004 to early spring 2005.
In 2008, the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure became a part of the European Poker Tour, as PokerStars had begun to assume a larger role in the EPT each year. By 2011, PokerStars not only sponsored the tour but owned it.
The current EPT season is its 18th, a result of Season 16 elongated from October 2020 to December 2022 due to the lack of live poker in much of Europe during the Covid-19 pandemic. In addition, the tournaments that ran in 2017 were during a time when PokerStars renamed the EPT as the PokerStars Championship (PSC), but the EPT name returned in 2018.
Where It Is Now
Season 18, which is in progress, just finished its third stop of this year’s tour. Action started in February 2024 in Paris, then went to Monte Carlo and Barcelona.
To demonstrate the growth since Season 1, despite all regulatory and societal obstacles along the way, EPT Barcelona hosted two weeks of tournaments, including a €5,300 buy-in Main Event that attracted 1,469 unique players from 82 countries. From the €9,578,750 prize pool, Stephen Song won the Main Event for €1,290,386. The series featured players like Jake Cody, Niall Farrell, Maria Konnikova, Jennifer Shahade, Lex Veldhuis, Andre Akkari, Gerad Pique, and Barny Boatman.
Action will now head to the Mediterranean for EPT Cyprus in October and Czechia in December for the famous EPT Prague.
Twenty Years of EPT Statistics
After 20 years of EPT events, there are players who have emerged as the top winners on the tour. Luckily, the Hendon Mob Database tracks EPT winnings and titles, cashes and player nationalities. Those bring us some fun facts to share:
The Most EPT Main Event titles:
- Michael Watson (Canada)
- Mikalai Pobal (:Belarus) and Victoria Coren Mitchell (UK) each hold 2 titles
Most EPT Cashes:
- Konstantin Puchkov (Russia) 101
- Steve O’Dwyer (USA) 93
- Adrian Mateos (Spain) 86
- Ole Schemion (Germany) 82
- Jan Bendik (Slovakia) 81
Most EPT Titles by Country:
- USA 18
- England 16
- Germany 16
- France 11
- Sweden 10
Top EPT Women Money List:
- Vanessa Selbst (USA) $4,084,735
- Liv Boeree (UK) $2,645,664
- Victoria Coren Mitchell (UK) $2,066,469
- Lucille Cailly (France) $1,452,793
- Sandra Naujoks (Germany) $1,376,137
Top 10 EPT Winners
One list on the Hendon Mob Database shows the top money earners in the history of the European Poker Tour. And many of these players are arguably among the best in the world, so it is not surprising that they made so much money on the EPT.
10. Jean-Noel Thorel (France) $6,743,013
The sole French player on this top ten list is well-known in France, actually sitting as the top live tournament earner in the country. More than a quarter of his $20M in lifetime earnings to date came from EPT events. He has played regularly since 2008 in Europe, with occasional visits to the United States and Asia as well. He has titles in EPT side events and at the WSOP Europe, the most recent win coming at EPT Barcelona when he won the Super High Roller Warm-Up event for more than €500K.
9. Stephen Chidwick (UK) $6,787,864
Starting in the days of the poker boom, Stephen Chidwick learned to play poker online and honed his skills there. As soon as he was old enough to play live, he began to travel to series like the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure and European Poker Tour to see if his online abilities translated. They did. He won a side event at the 2008 PCA in the Bahamas, He found great success on the EPT in 2013 and 2014, and he has won numerous side events, including EPT High Rollers, over the years. These days, he can usually be found in high-stakes tournaments, adding to his $59M in lifetime live tournament earnings.
8. Daniel Dvoress (Canada) $7,267,955
As the fourth Canadian poker pro on this list, Daniel Dvoress is not as well known as the others because he keeps a low profile. The online poker player came from behind the computer in 2013 to start winning poker tournaments life, and he has accrued nearly $32M in the time since then. Dvoress still travels the world playing poker but mostly plays high roller tournaments and online poker when possible.
7. Timothy Adams (Canada) $7,275,557
The third Canadian in this top ten list is Tim Adams, a WSOP bracelet winner and collector of EPT side event titles. His largest scores came from winning the Triton Poker Super High Roller in 2019 for more than $3.5M and the partypoker Millions Sochi Super High Roller Bowl in 2020 for $3.6M. In total, his lifetime earnings exceed $38.5M as of late summer 2024.
6. Adrian Mateos (Spain) $8,060,188
Spanish native Adrian Mateos makes his home in England now but still travels the world to play poker. European series were his mainstay for the first few years that he played live poker tournaments, and he started strong, winning the Estrellas Poker Tour Main Event in 2013 for his first six-figure score. In 2015, he won the EPT Monte Carlo Grand Final Main Event for more than €1M, and he’s won several WSOP bracelets through the years to go with that title. With nearly $50M in earnings to date, Mateos remains the top all-time tournament earner in Spain and among the top ten in the entire world.
5. Mikita Bodyakovsky (Belarus) $8,312,908
Whether spelling his last name as Bodyakovsky or Badziakouski, the Belarus native is one of the highest ranked poker players in the world. Still in his early 30s, Bodyakovsky started playing poker in his late teens, several years after the poker boom hit its heyday. The European-based player travels nearly anywhere to find a good high-stakes tournament, but he started – like most players – in smaller buy-in tournaments. The EPT was a convenient tour for him much of the time, so he played quite often, taking down some EPT High Roller tournaments to add to his $55M in lifetime live earnings to date.
4. Michael Watson (Canada) $8,506,052
Of the $29M Mike Watson has accumulated in live tournament cashes in his career, more than a quarter of it came from playing EPT tournaments. Watson may have started his poker journey online playing as “SirWatts,” where he accumulated more than $13.5M in tournament winnings. He has shown himself to be a versatile and skilled player. And as one of the few people to ever win two EPT Main Events – the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure in 2016 and EPT Monte Carlo in 2023 – Watson continues to rank as one of the best in the world.
3. Sam Greenwood (Canada) $8,800,095
Also a product of the poker boom, Sam Greenwood put his stock trading career on the sidelines in 2006 when his online poker earnings accumulated quickly. He eventually racked up more than $6M online, but he excelled at live poker tournaments as well. Without a boisterous personality, Greenwood isn’t a household name among most poker fans, but players in the high-stakes world know and respect his game. He has accumulated more than $35.5M in live tournaments to date, most recently adding winnings from EPT Barcelona, where he cashed in five events – four of them final tables and all of them together totaling more than €471K.
2. Ole Schemion (Germany) $9,340,351
This German native relocated to Austria for the ease of online poker. Live poker is his strength, as he has earned nearly $21M in those tournaments to date, nearly half of it coming from the European Poker Tour. His first-ever live cashes were in EPT Berlin, where he won a €1K NLHE tournament, and he continued to rack up the wins from that point forward. Even so, and even though he has a WSOP bracelet and two World Poker Tour titles to his name, the EPT Main Event title eludes him.
1. Steve O’Dwyer (USA) $16,303,908
Born in the United States with Irish heritage, Stephen O’Dwyer got his poker start during the poker boom. He saw Chris Moneymaker win the 2003 WSOP Main Event and took his hobby of small home games in college to the world of online poker. To date, he has now earned more than $7M in online poker tournaments and more than $44M in live tournaments around the world. Now living in Ireland, O’Dwyer continues to play the global poker circuit, though mostly in Europe and often in high-stakes tournaments. At the recent EPT Barcelona, he finished fifth in the Super High Roller Second Chance event and won the PokerStars Cuatro Knockout event.
Conclusion
The European Poker Tour has grown significantly since its inception in 2004, evolving into a premier poker series that attracts top players from around the globe. As the EPT celebrates its 20th anniversary, it's clear that the tour continues to be a dominant force in the poker world, with record-breaking events and notable champions like Stephen Song and Steve O'Dwyer. From humble beginnings to a worldwide phenomenon, the EPT’s influence on the poker landscape remains undeniable, and with stops in Cyprus and Prague still to come this season, the excitement continues.
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