Sandra Naujoks wins EPT Dortmund

EPT Dortmund main event, €5,000 No-limit Hold’em, 10-14th March 2009

Entrants: 667
Buyin: €5,000
Prizepool: €4,217,088

1. Sandra Naujoks, Germany, €917,000
2. Holger Kanisch, Germany, €533,000
3. Marc Gork, Germany, €307,000
4. Johan Storakers, Sweden, €237,000
5. Mike McDonald, Canada, €197,000
6. Luca Pagano, Italy, €153,000
7. William Thorson, Sweden, €116,500
8. Cengizcan Ulusu, Turkey, €83,500
9. Florian Langmann, Germany, €50,000

Sandra Naujoks, a member of the prestigious PokerStars.de ShootingStar team, has won EPT Dortmund, earning €917,000. The 27-year-old from Dessau is only the second woman to win an EPT title after Victoria Coren, now a Team PokerStars Pro, won in London during season three.
Naujoks triumphed in Germany’s biggest ever poker tournament after beating fellow German Holger Kanisch, a 26-year-old economics student from Koblenz.

Germany dominated the €5,300 no limit hold ’em event with 270 players out of a 667-strong field and 31 players cashing from a total of 64. Between them, German players won €2.1 million – more than half the total prize pool of €3,335,000. There were 143 players in the field who won their seats online with PokerStars.

Naujoks – known as the “Black Mamba” – has had a storming start to her poker career. Soon after she started playing live last year, she won the European Championship at the Casinos Austria Poker Tour for €174,500, beating the Team PokerStars Pro Alexander Kravchenko. She was named Europe’s Leading Lady at the European Poker Awards and joined the PokerStars.de ShootingStar team at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure in January.

She said: “I can’t believe it. It’s such a great feeling to win my home EPT. The ShootingStars are such a great team – we have so many excellent tournament players. I think we will win two WSOP bracelets this year and I want to win one of them!”

Naujoks became the third German to win an EPT event this season after her fellow ShootingStar Sebastian Ruthenberg took down EPT Barcelona in September and Moritz Kranich triumphed in Deauville in January. The two other Germans to win on the tour are Michael Schulze in Warsaw during season four and Thang Duc Nguyen in Baden during season three.

The final was disappointing for Team PokerStars Pros William Thorson and Luca Pagano. Making their third and fourth EPT final tables respectively, both were desperate to secure an EPT victory but Thorson was knocked out in seventh place for €116,500 and Pagano 90 minutes later in sixth. For Pagano, it was a record 10th EPT cash and the €153,000 payout pushes him up to second place on the EPT all-time Tournament Leader Board.

The final was also a near miss for the Canadian player Mike McDonald who won in Dortmund last year and made another final table, before being eliminated in fifth place by Naujoks. The ShootingStar team’s latest recruit Florian Langmann, who was signed on March 12, came ninth for €50,000.

Another record-breaker at the tournament was the Portuguese player Joao Barbosa, winner of EPT Warsaw, who celebrated his sixth cash this season when he came 36th for €11,600. EPT3 Dortmund winner Andreas Hoivold was also hoping to become the first double EPT title winner until he was eliminated in 13th place.

The tournament featured a wealth of other international stars, including Pokerstars-sponsored WSOP champion Peter Eastgate as well as Team PokerStars Pros Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier, Noah Boeken, Dario Minieri, Luca Pagano, Katja Thater, Alex Kravchenko and all the German ShootingStars team. Polish pop star Michal Wisniewski and Germany folk singer and TV host Florian Silbereisen also competed.

The €5,350 buy-in tournament, hosted by Casino Hohensyburg attracted a record field of 667 players from 43 countries, including 143 players who won their seats online with PokerStars. The total prize pool was €3,335,000.

The last two days of the tournament were broadcast live on pokerstars.tv for EPTLive.
Sven Stiel, PokerStars Marketing Director Germanics, said: “It’s been a huge success – the biggest poker tournament ever held in Germany. The results have been great for German poker as well, with the last three players all from Germany. I am thrilled that Sandra did so well. The first time I ever saw her play, it was obvious to me that she was a real talent and we just had to sign her for the ShootingStar team.”