PokerStars EPT Monte Carlo Grand Final Won By Nicolas Chouity

Nicolas Chouity has won the EPT Monte Carlo Grand Final, after defeating a field of 848 players over five days to take down the title and the €1.7m first place prize.
What makes the 23-year-old Lebanese man’s feat even more remarkable, is that he only risked $22 of his own money to enter the €10,600 no-limit hold’em event, after qualifying for the tournament via an online satellite at PokerStars.
This year the prestigious event managed to attract a first rate field of pros all vying to take home a share of the €8,480,000 prize pool. By the end of Days 1a and 1b, however, the field had been cut in half with top pros dropping by the wayside including Laak, Barry Greenstein, Alex Kravchenko, Barny Boatman, Erik Seidel, Phil Ivey, Patrick Antonius, Matts Mattern, Joe Cada and Yevgeniy Timoshenko.
By the end of Day 4, the competition had played down to eight contestant who all returned the following day to take their places at the final table.
 
Nicolas Chouity was clearly the man to watch as he entered the final table holding almost 40% of the chips in play. He then proceeded to use his big stack to good use and personally dispatched 6 out of 7 opponents to eventually force a heads-up against Josef Klinger.
Going into the heads-up battle Nicolas Chouity still maintained a 4 to 1 chip lead over his Austrian opponent, and by the time Klinger got all his money into the centre of the table with pocket 8’s, he knew the game was up as Chouity flipped over the pocket rockets to clinch the win.
Josef Klinger still walked away with an impressive €1 million pay-day for his deep run in the tournament, whilst an EPT crown and the top prize of €1,700,000.00 went to Nicolas Chouity. Commenting on his remarkable achievement, Chouity said:
“It’s a dream come true. I feel great. I had confidence coming into the final and I had the chip lead but you never know with poker and I was going for first, only first.”