Pedro Cairat Victorious at PNC Barcelona for €432,178

Pedro Cairat may have been down to just 1 big blind on Day 1 of the PokerStars National Championship Barcelona, but the Argentinian player proved once more that as long as you have a chip and a chair in a game of poker, you still have a chance, no matter how slim, of eventually coming out on top.
Cairat ponied up his €1,100 tournament buy-in fee, alongside a total field of 4,557 players, to create a prize pool of €4,420,290. Commenting after having overcome the huge field, including Romania’s Marius Gicovanu heads-up, to claim a top prize of €432,178 ($510k), Cairat said:
“I had the luck of a champion, and also good timing.”
In fact, not only did Cairat make his incredible comeback on Day 1, but as the money bubble approached later on in the tournament, the Argentinian found himself once more on a diminutive stack consisting of just 3 big blinds. Managing to survive into the money, Cairat subsequently progressed alll the way through to the final table, albeit with the shortest-stack of all the players still in contention.
After three players of the final table of eight were ousted from the event, Pedro Cairat then sprung to life, starting with the elimination of Agnius Ismailovas in 5th, whose pocket aces faltered against the As-Qs of his opponent, who ended up making a flush on a Kc-9s-2s-Ks-5c board.
Continuing his good run, Cairat’s pocket nines overcame the pocket tens of Nikolaos Lampropoulos, who then exited in 4th place, and after later sending Bart Lybaert to the rail in 3rd, the heads-up phase of the tournament got underway between Cairat and Marius Gicovanu for the title.
At this stage, Cairat enjoyed a massive 115m to 19.5m chip lead over Gicovanu, and before long the deciding hand was played with Cairat’s A-K defeating his final competitor’s A-10 to clinch the victory.
Final Table Results:
1: Pedro Cairat (Arg) €432,178*
2: Marius Gicovanu (Rom) €372,349*
3: Bart Lybaert (Bel) €368,470*
4: Nikolaos Lampropoulos (Gre) €208,000
5: Agnius Ismailovas (Lit) €165,000
6: Angel Blanco (Spn) €127,000
7: Dylan Kehoe (Ire) €93,000
8: Brian Kaufman (Urg) €66,370