Bruno Benveniste Wins PMU.fr WPTDeepStacks Deauville for €93,700

Bruno Benveniste has won the PMU.fr WPTDeepStacks Deauville Main Event for €93,700. The Frenchman bested a field of 421 players to clinch victory shortly before 1am local time. The result is by far the largest cash of his career.

In second place was Sandro Pitzanti who recorded his best WPT cash since finishing 11th in the WPT Amsterdam Main Event two years ago.

Benveniste takes home the prize money and trophy, as well as a €2,000 package to the WPTDeepStacks Berlin in January.

Here are the full final table results:

The day started with just 16 players remaining, with Julien Sitbon starting as chip leader as the only player over three million in chips. Alexandre Poulain was the first elimination, after doubling up Jean Claude Loustau, and eventually falling at the hands of Day 1a chip leader Ekrem Sanioglu.

Franck Kalfon, Michel Cohen, and last woman standing Mercedes Osti followed Poulain out the door, with Sitbon still topping the chip counts.

Damien Ducros and popular French pro Jean Montury were next, before Brice Bourgeix bubbled the final table of nine. Bourgeix came into the day second in chips, but endured a difficult time of it, and was eliminated after losing a flip to Miroslav Alilovic.

Benveniste came into the final table as the chip leader, after exploiting the short-handed final table bubble play. The short stack was Julian Sarfati who was the first to be eliminated after losing out to Sitbon.

The early stages were action-packed, no more so than when Sandro Pitzanti clashed with Robin Visconti – a classic Aces vs Kings moment, with Pitzanti’s kings holding up to send Visconti to the rail in 8th. The hand also saw Pitzanti take over as tournament chip leader.

The action didn’t stop there and spectators were in for a treat a short while later, when we lost two players in one hand.

It started innocently enough, with Sitbon moving all in for his last seven big blinds. He got five callers and the flop of was dealt. Sanioglu moved all in with a flush draw, and got called by Benveniste, before Alilovic moved all in over the top with a set of fours. Jean Claude Loustau was in position with a set of kings and called, with Benveniste folding.

The turn gave Sanioglu a flush, quintupling him up (seen below stacking his chips), with Sitbon and Alilovic eliminated in a single hand. Pitzanti and Loustau were both sitting on 3.5m stacks, as the short stacks continued to battle five-handed.

Next to go was Tobias Peters. Peters secured his fourth cash in WPTDeepStacks Main Events this season, and astonishingly this was his third final table. However, he was unable to beat his runner-up finish from Valkenburg, falling in fifth at the hands of Loustau. Peters did however secure enough points to take over from Omar Lakhdari at the head of the Player of the Year leaderboard, with just one stop remaining.

Sanioglu was eliminated in fourth place, after running into the Kings of Loustau, and the pace suddenly slowed. Loustau looked to push ahead, but was consistently pegged back by both Pitzanti and Benvenesti.

It was only when Benvenesti’s flopped set took a chunk of chips from Loustau’s rivered top pair that the Frenchman began to falter, with Pitzanti finishing him off to make the stacks even going into heads-up play.

With Loustau out of the equation the pace quickened, with the chips flowing in one direction. That was to Benveniste who soon got his opponent down to less than ten big blinds. Pitzanti managed to double up once, and got his chips in once more ahead of his opponent. However, a rivered ten handed the win to Benveniste, the largest of his career so far.