Few people outside of online poker’s inner circle are likely familiar with the name Ben Wilinofsky, but the online poker phenom who goes by the name of “NeverScaredB” has racked up nearly $1 million in online tournament winnings over the past two years; enough to land him a job as a poker coach at the online poker training site PocketFives Training.
Now the 22 year-old Wilinofsky has claimed his first live tournament cash, and made the most of it by winning the PokerStars EPT Berlin Main Event worth an impressive €825,000!
A total of 773 players entered the €5,000 buy-in tournament that was held at the Spielbank Casino in the heart of Berlin, Germany, and when the dust settled it was the young Canadian poker pro Wilinofsky who would take home the title by besting a mainly European field thanks to the NAPT, WPT and WSOP Circuit tournaments running stateside at the same time.
The only sponsored pro at the final table was the Dutchmen, and member of Team PokerStars Holland, Joep Van den Bijgaart, who couldn’t get anything going in the final day of the tournament and bowed out in 7th place.
Another player looking for history was Martin Jacobson, who was appearing at his third EPT final table this season, and his fourth overall! Alas, Jacobson is still in search of his first EPT title after finishing in 4th place: A title that seems to be an inevitable outcome based on his results thus far.
Wilinofsky entered the final table with a small chip-lead over German Maximilian Heinzelmann, but was able to extend his lead early on –mainly by picking on Heinzelmann—and shortly after play began Wilinofsky had nearly doubled his stack to over 10 million chips. From there the young pro never looked back, taking a 16 million to 6 million chip advantage into heads-up play against Heinzelmann.
Here is a look at how the final table fared at the EPT Berlin Main Event (results courtesy of Cardplayer.com):
- 1st – Ben Wilinofsky, Canada, PokerStars qualifier – €825,000
- 2nd – Maximilian Heinzelmann, Germany, €500,000
- 3rd – Vadzim Kursevich, Belarus, €300,000
- 4th – Martin Jacobson, Sweden, PokerStars qualifier, €230,000
- 5th – Armin Mette, Germany, €180,000
- 6th – Darren Kramer, South Africa, €140,000
- 7th – Joep van den Bijgaart, Holland, Team PokerStars Pro, €100,000
- 8th – Jonas Gutteck, Germany, €66,000
The EPT’s next stop will be in San Remo, where Team PokerStars Pro Liv Boeree broke through with her first major win last year, propelling her to the top of the poker mountain when it comes to female players –a standing she has since proven herself worthy of with a number of big online scores over the past year.
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Written by Steve Ruddock on April 11th, 2011
Glad to see Darren Kramer came in the top 10. I didn’t even realise he was playing in the EPT. But congrats to Ben Wilinofsky for taking the 1st place! And of course good luck to Liv, good to see the ladies in the tournaments as well!