Bodog Beat

All eyes at the EPT Warsaw final table were on Italian poker pro Dario Minieri (center), but it was Joao Barbosa (left) who emerged victorious. (Image from EuropeanPokerTour.com)

The latest event on the European Poker Tour wrapped up last night when the EPT Warsaw crowned a new champion. Birthday boy Joao Barbosa took home the €367,141 ($463,850) first-place prize, giving himself a pretty nice 26th birthday present. (Mother? Father? Did you never love us? Is that why there was only ever a hand-knit sweater and a second-hand bicycle?)

Going into the final table Barbosa was sixth in chips and was looking at an uphill climb to reach the top made even steep by the fact that Italian poker pro Dario Minieri was the chip leader and playing lights out at the end of the previous day. However, the Portuguese started by eliminating Sergey Shcherbatskiy, who had started the day second in chips, in sixth place and never looked back, bulldozing everyone in his path, including Minieri in third place.

Barbosa met Nico Behling face to face for the title with an impressive chip lead but found himself in a back and forth heads-up match that lasted for quite some time before he was able to put him away. The win makes him the first ever Portuguese poker player to win a European Poker Tour event.

The EPT will head down to the Czech Republic next for the EPT Prague and then in mid-January to the apparently European part of the Caribbean for the PCA. After that it's France for EPT Deauville and then Denmark for the EPT Scandinavian Open and so on and so on. If you want a chance to travel to one of these exotic locations then qualify online for the EPT at Bodog and get the chance to win a $12,000 Player's Choice package.