After several years in France, a year’s hiatus in 2014 preceded the first WSOP Europe festival in two years as Berlin, Germany, became the location for 10 WSOP bracelet events. There were plenty of new events, with a €550 buy-in ‘Oktoberfest’ No Limit Hold’em event, which welcomed an amazing 2,144 players, and the lowest buy-in PLO event ever on the WSOP, which cost just €550 to play and was won by one of the most important players ever to play the game.
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Greek Glory in Berlin
With ten events taking place, the WSOP Europe was set to be the largest ever on European soil. The opening event cost €2,200 to play and was in NLHE, but 6-Max in format. A total of 197 entrants were topped by Greek player Makarios Avramidis, who claimed the €105,000 top prize at the expense of home-grown talents Frederic Schwarzer, Paul Michaelis, and Marvin Rettenmaier. Dietrich Fast would avenge the home crowd in the next event, winning the biggest tournament of the series, the Oktoberfest event, for €157,749, beating British player John Gale heads-up.
Other big names such as Steve O’Dwyer (5th for €43,409) and Shaun Deeb (20th for €7,676) came close, but if American players were disappointed to miss out on the opening bracelet events, their persistence would pay off. After Richard Gryko beat Mike Leah heads-up to claim the €3,250 Por Limit Omaha Event #3 title for €126,345, United States player Ryan Hefter took home gold in the €1,650 Monster Stack event for €176,205. With an awesome 580 entries, Danish player Henrick Hecklen was perhaps the biggest name to go close as he crashed out just before the podium in fourth place for a score of €59,495.
Over the next four events, a trio of Greek players made it four wins for Greece from the opening 80% of the festival. Alex Komaromi won the €2,200 Mixed Event #5 for €65,740 by beating American Scott Clements, Pavlos Xanthopoulos took down the €3,250 NLHE Event #6 for €182,510, and Georgios Sotiropoulos won the €1,100 Turbo NLHE Event #8. Sotiropoulos, in particular, went on to great things and currently has over $8.1 million in live tournament earnings, 4 World Series of Poker Bracelets, and has become the most successful Greek poker player in ranking events of all time.
Two Poker Legends Take Gold
Event #7 was the smallest buy-in PLO WSOP event of all time, and in 2015, it was won by a poker player whose very existence has benefitted millions throughout his career. Barny Boatman co-invented The Hendon Mob, the online resource for ranking poker events, and as one of the original Hendon Mob, along with bookmaker Joe Beevers, Barny’s brother and award-winning actor Ross, and Ram ‘Crazy Horse’ Vaswani, built the website up from the ground up, before selling it in the late 2010s. After seeing off Shannon Shorr in third place for €24,520, Boatman beat Poland’s Grzegorz Grochulski for his second WSOP bracelet, he won his first in 2013 for a massive $546,080.
Although the 2015 WSOPE Main Event was officially Event #9, Event #10, the €25,600 High Roller event, concluded before it. With 64 entries, only seven players made money; among them were some of the biggest players in the world in 2015. After Timothy Adams busted in seventh place, it was left to his Canadian countryman Jonathan Duhamel to fly the maple leaf flag, and the 2010 WSOP Main Event winner in Las Vegas did it brilliantly.
Outlasting a field of superstars, German players Fedor Holz (6th) and Christoph Vogelsang (5th) couldn’t make the final four, while Samuel Chartier and Mustapha Kanit missed the heads-up. Highly decorated Belgian player Davidi Kitai was the man who stood in Duhamel’s way, but the Canadian rode it out to win the top prize of €554,395, which was incredibly only the fourth biggest score of his career.
Seidel Slides Out in Seventh
As the 2015 WSOP Main Event closed registration for the tournament, there were 313 entries, meaning 32 players would make money from the €10,450-entry tournament. Among those slipping into the money places were Jason Mercier, who min-cashed for €20,000 in 32nd place, now GGMILLION$ host Jeff Gross (28th for €20,000) and Dominik Nitsche (20th for €23,500), whose moment of controversy in 2024 would keep the world talking from the Vegas series to the 2024 WSOP Europe.
At the final table, Erik Seidel failed to add to his WSOP legend when he busted in seventh place for €100,000, the first six-figure score of the event, Felix Bleiker (6th for €130,000), and the aforementioned Dietrich Fast (5th for €175,000) departed too. Andrew ‘Chewy’ Lichtenberger was more of a poker newbie than the Octopi Poker co-founder he is known for now back in 2015, and his €225,000 result fo finishing fourth was one of the biggest of his fledgling career.
Three-handed, JC Alvarado moved all-in with ace-king, but while he was dominating David Lopez’ ace-queen, Lopez rivered a queen to overtake and eliminate his Mexican opponent. The Spaniard took the lead into the final duel, with American Kevin MacPhee a 2:1 dog, but MacPhee fought back. Five years earlier, MacPhee had won a controversial EPT Berlin Main Event, which had been interrupted by gunmen looking to rob the venue. The danger was averted, and MacPhee’s victory was for a record score of €1 million. It saw him fall in love with the city.
MacPhee the Main Man in Berlin
Needing to recover in terms of chips heads-up, MacPhee quickly bullied himself into a lead, before losing it again, but a Broadway straight saw him retake the advantage, and this time he saw it through. Lopez committed his final chips with the best hand, pocket kings, but MacPhee’s weaker ace made a wheel straight to win, and he could celebrate a second major title in the German capital – not bad for ‘a kid from Idaho coming out to Europe’ as MacPhee put it.
“Now I can start to cement my legacy,” he told PokerNews then. “I think this starts to secure my reputation as an elite player. There [are] a lot of players with one bracelet. Two bracelets, you thin out a lot of people. Two bracelets and an EPT title, there’s not too many people that have that.”
Taking home €883,000 – a little less than the €1,000,000 he won back in 2010 – MacPhee was overwhelmed and delighted to have won his second bracelet of 2015.
“I’m more of a no-limit tournament specialist, so it’s very difficult for me to win two bracelets in one year. It’s pretty cool. Berlin is just a great city. I come here knowing that even if I have a bad time at the poker table, I’m going to have a great time in the city. I would love to live here some time.”
Auf Wiedersehen Berlin
MacPhee knew that heading into the final six with a commanding lead, anything less than victory would have been a disappointment.
“All the pressure was on me,” he admitted. “These guys could come in and play pretty fearlessly. They need to ladder, but the pressure was on me to win. I’m supposed to win here a lot of the time. But that’s getting away from the table and thinking about the big picture. In the trenches, I just play every hand the best I can, be stack size aware, be ICM aware and just trying to make good decisions.”
MacPhee won the very first and last WSOP Europe festival to take place in Germany. Two years later, after another year off, WSOP Europe would be back, this time as an annual, not biannual, series of events. The WSOP Europe was going to arrive in Rozvadov on the Czech-German border in 2017, where it remains to this day one of the jewels in the crown of the World Series of Poker.
The winner in 2017 would come from nowhere to change their life forever.
| Player | Country | Prize | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | Kevin MacPhee | United States | €883,000 |
| 2nd | David Lopez | Spain | €475,000 |
| 3rd | JC Alvarado | Mexico | €315,000 |
| 4th | Andrew Lichtenberger | United States | €225,000 |
| 5th | Kilian Kramer | Austria | €175,000 |
| 6th | Felix Bleiker | Switzerland | €130,000 |
| 7th | Erik Seidel | United States | €100,000 |
| 8th | Mario Sanchez | Spain | €75,000 |
| 9th | Johannes Becker | Germany | €60,000 |
2014 WSOP Europe 2017 WSOP Europe
About the Author: Paul Seaton has written about poker for over 10 years, interviewing some of the best players ever to play the game such as Daniel Negreanu, Johnny Chan and Phil Hellmuth. Over the years, Paul has reported live from tournaments such as the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas and the European Poker Tour. He has also written for other poker brands where he was Head of Media, as well as BLUFF magazine, where he was Editor.
