Following the initial excitement and ultimate crushing disappointment of that last hand, Morten Guldhammer limped in on the button, Richard Loth folded in the small blind and Roberto Romanello checked his option.
Heads up, they proceeded to check down the board before Romanello took it down with jack-high.
First into the pot, Morten Klein open-shoved for 744,000. The table folded around to small blind Morten Guldhammer and he, not surprisingly, called quickly and awkwardly. Klein was at risk, and the cards were on their backs:
Klein:
Guldhammer:
Oh, well, that's not very exciting, now is it? The board wouldn't provide any four-flush drama, either: . No chips change hands, and it's on to Hand #2.
Morten Klein learned poker from his father with his four brothers and sisters. “It was a hard school,” he said.
Klein now has three children of his own, aged 11, 17 and 18 – and he has already taught them all how to play. When he is not playing (or teaching) poker, Klein works for a Norweigan online slot-machine company.
Klein has played poker seriously since 2006 and his major results are 51st place at EPT Barcelona 2009 and second place in the Norwegian heads-up championship in 2009.
Bedridden owing to a football injury in 2006, Roberto Romanello reached for his laptop and began playing poker online – the first step in a career than would earn him more than $600,000 in live tournament winnings, and counting.
Romanello won the European Open last February, worth $200,000, and this is his best result so far on the EPT, bettering his 32nd place in Copenhagen last year. He battled food poisoning on day three, but ended with the chip lead.
These days Romanello considers himself to be a full-time poker professional but used to split his time between playing poker and helping to run his family's award winning fish and chip shop in Wales.
Married with four children, Richard Loth is a recreational player who normally plays multi-table tournaments online. He has been playing for four years and bought in directly for this event, and is now enjoying his biggest result live or online.
He has taken this tournament one day at a time and has progressed steadily to the final table – he’ll return to his career as a consultant come what may.
Morten Guldhammer is the fairytale story of the final table. He won his seat in EPT Copenhagen through a series of tournaments run by PokerStars with the Danish newspaper Ekstra Bladet.
First he beat 1,457 opponents in a $1 buy-in tournament. Then he beat 15 other tournament winners for his EPT Copenhagen package. Normally only a freeroll player, he has already earned more than ever before – and has surpassed his pre-tournament goal of making day two.
He has cultivated a loose aggressive style during the tournament and was responsible for bursting the bubble – beating Craig Hopkins – and knocking out at least five others en route to the final table and a stack of more than two million.
One of a huge army of highly successful professional Swedish players, Anton Wigg is enjoying his best ever appearance at an EPT Main Event.
Indeed, it’s his first ever cash on Europe’s premier tour, although he took down the European Masters in Barcelona for €55,000 last July and made a final table of a PCA side event last month.
Despite his tender years, he has played poker for four years, three as a professional, and won his seat here in a €500 satellite on PokerStars.
Magnus Hansen is no stranger to the final tables of the European Poker Tour and finished third here in Copenhagen in 2008.
He earned more than two million Kroner for that performance, his biggest win to date, and it was a contributing factor in his decision to turn pro last May – after he had finished studies in IT.
He is also a keen Counter–Strike player and used to be a member of one of the top 20 teams in the world.