Cebollada wins big

After a gruelling 12 hour final table Ruben Cebollada won the Unibet Open Barcelona and the massive prize money

The Unibet Open Barcelona is over and at the end of it all only one man remained standing and that man was the Spaniard, Ruben Sanchez Cebollada. Ruben beat precisely 387 other players to take the title and the €145,000 ($209,446) that comes from winning this massive poker event. The total amount of money that went into the prize pool was even bigger than expected at the huge amount of €551,500.
The winner arrived at the final table of 9 players with the third highest chip stack and was one of three Spaniards still competing in front of a home crowd, the other two Spaniards being Jose Marin Fuentes and Emilio Munoz Dominguez. In addition to the three Spaniards were three Dutchmen in the form of Daniel Reijmer, Pim Van Riet and Tuan Duy Ngo. Also sitting at the final table were the Russian Andrei Vlassenko, Lithuanian Tomas Kesiunas, and Sweden’s Davor Pavic.

No one could have predicted the 12 hour marathon that would then be run at that last table with no quarter asked and none given. Eventually something had to give and one by one the competitors fell short of the final prize. The players began pushing all in one after the other as the blinds reached massive levels. The following were the first three to fall; Tomas Kesiunas in 9th (€10,000), Tuan Duy Ngo in 8th (€12,400), Daniel Reijmer in 7th (€17,300), and Andrei Vlassenko in 6th (€23,500).

This far into the tournament the average stack was a mere 20 big blinds ensuring that there was a whole range of bluffing and pushing all in. It came down to a straight forward heads up battle between Sanchez Cebollada and Sweden’s Davor Pavic. By the time both of them were all in the blinds were up to 80,000/160,000. Ruben with an A-9 which dominated Pavic’s A-7, just to make it official a 9 came up on the flop to give Ruben the pair, the hand and the entire tournament. Pavic walked away with a very handsome €90,000 prize for his efforts while Ruben took the big prize and the title of 2011 Unibet Open Barcelona champion.

The next Unibet tournament is a couple of months away and is to be held in Dublin from the 25th to the 28th August. Only 400 players will be allowed to compete and qualification has already begun.