Dominique Potenza Poker

At the end of Day 1a of the Winamax Poker Open Dublin Main Event , just 37 players booked their spot on Day 2 from a starting field of 183. Players making their way to Day 2 included Winamax Team Pros Joao Vieira (195,500) and Sylvain Loosli (142,000).

• Dominique Potenza Poker Game
• Dominique Potenza Poker Player
• Dominique Potenza Poker Tournaments
• Dominique Potenza Poker Chair

Dominique Potenza Eliminated in 9th Place (€10,000) Paul Meyniel Eliminated in 10th Place (€7,500) Adrien Delmas Eliminated in 11th Place (€7,500) Potenza Cracks the Kings of Delmas to Double. Gabor Csire Eliminated in 12th Place (€5,659) Macdonnell Elimination Boosts Lamagnere. Even More Early Eliminations. Dominique Potenza Eliminated in 3rd Place. Dominique Potenza shoved all in from the button and Samir Akhoullou quickly folded his small blind. Christophe De Meulder asked for a count and the dealer confirmed Potenza had 2,375,000 in front of him. The poker world is open! It’s a great place; it’s not just the capital. Lamagnere kept hammering away at the competition, eliminating Dominique Potenza. Coming up from behind, however, was.

However, the chip leader at the end of the day is Dominique Potenza who used a unique style of aggression and panache to bag 655,000 in chips, slightly ahead of well-known Irish player Marc Macdonnell (639,000). Macdonnell, who has home court advantage, is used to success here in Dublin at the Winamax Poker Open, having finished fourth for €40,000 in 2013; it's also Macdonnell's biggest score on home soil.

'I just ran pretty good all day,' said Macdonnell, 'When it's short-handed and you make good hands all day...I mean I ran really good.'

Dominique Potenza Poker Game

The Irishman said that there was nothing crazy all day, just players not believing him in certain situations.

'Irish people never believe me, so it's kind of nice. The French more so; more than the Irish that's for sure. But tournaments like this are just a minefield sometimes.'

Other players bagging up stacks include last year's runner-up Sonny Franco (130,000) and former Winamax Team Pro Adrien Guyon (272,500).

Notable eliminations today included last year's winner Otto Richard and former champion Pierre Calamusa, both of whom fired two bullets. They will be back tomorrow, most likely joined by Winamax Team Pros Gaelle Baumann and Leo Margets, 2017 final tablist Teunis Kooij, Sander van Wesemael and Mark Buckley who were unsuccessful in their attempts to make Day 2.

Photos courtesy of Caroline Darcourt

The winner of the 2018 Unibet Poker Belgian Championship Main Event has just been crowned and it’s a great one! Belgium’s own Christophe De Meulder grabbed the win playing heads-up against Samir Akhoullou. De Meulder will be going home with the pretty trophy and amazing first-place prize of €42,020!

With 438 entries in total, no records were broken in the Main Event but we’re still very happy with these wonderful attendance numbers, especially with the entries in all the side events.

These are the results of the Final Table:

Dominique Potenza Poker Player

UPBC Main Event Final Table

Today’s action:

The action started slowly as there were two short stacks at the start of the day. Fabrice Halleux and Peter Dupontwere blinding down and as they were the two players that were left in the free last longer for online Unibet qualifiers, neither were willing to risk their tournament life. After just over an hour, Halleux finally gave in and shoved with pocket deuces into the king-eight of Dominique Potenza. Potenza hit a king on the flop to eliminate Halleux from the tournament and deliver a Unibet Open package worth €2,000 to Dupont.

Second to leave the Final Table stage was Werner Schroons who ran his king-jack into the ace-queen of Akhoullou. Schroons was happy enough to have come this far after he had to re-enter after busting early on one of the Day 1s. Finishing in 7th place was Dupont after he managed to double up twice. He shoved his king-queen into the ace-ten of De Meulder and couldn’t win, but still managed to grab a pay jump.

Tom Hermans was the next one to be eliminated when he found ace-eight but couldn’t beat the pocket eights of Potenza. Jonas Van Baelen had a pretty quiet run up till now, picking up and losing small pots, here and there, but he finally decided to put all his chips in with king-jack. Unfortunately for him, De Meulder found ace-king and took him out.

Koen Lauwereys was pretty card dead all day according to himself. When he did find good hands, the others had better ones. He lost his last chips when he ran his ace-trey into the pocket sixes of Akhoullou. Potenza then found his Waterloo when he held queen-jack and shoved them into the ace-queen of De Meulder. They both flopped a queen but no jack came on the rest of the board for Potenza and he was sent home in third place.

Dominique Potenza Poker Tournaments

Heads-up play went back and forth. De Meulder first won a pot to come back to even stacks, he then won one to nab the chip lead and didn’t let go of that lead. Both Akhoullou and De Meulder weren’t scared of playing their hands and raising when they felt like it. Akhoullou won a hand to have a little comeback but then lost again. When he was down to his last 3 million or so, he managed to double up. But shortly after, he lost a big one when he folded after a big raise he did and De Meulder put him all-in. In the end, Akhoullo called when De Meulder put him all-in preflop for his last 600,000. Akhoullo turned a straight but De Meulder rivered quads to claim the Belgian Championship this year.

Dominique Potenza Poker Chair

The champagne bottles was popped, De Meulder’s girlfriend and mother were over the moon, as was De Meulder himself, the confetti cannons were shot and with this, the live coverage of this event is over. We hope you enjoyed reading and seeing all the action. Catch you next time and see you at the next Unibet Open hopefully!

Céline Morreale & Christophe De Meulder