Yet another EPT Berlin update

The eventful EPT Berlin Main Event final table came to a conclusion Sunday afternoon, and it would be American Kevin MacPhee taking down the first prize of 1 million Euros, defeating Ilari Tahkakollio heads-up. MacPhee also had the chance to do this brief interview Monday about his weekend:

An interesting footnote to the excitement from Saturday was a decision Tahkakollio made when play eventually resumed. With 21 players remaining, he was involved in a hand with Luca Canielli, who was all-in for his last 600,000 with As-Qd, against Tahkakollio\’s Ad-10h, with the board showing 3c-Kc-8s-4c. At that moment, the armed robbery took place, scattering players and chips leaving this for the players to return to about four hours later (picture from pokerolymp.de):

As the players and tournament staff came back to their seats, and exact chip counts impossible to determine, tournament director met with the remaining players in the main event. It was decided that the players would go by the honor system to determine each player\’s chip stack.

Next was to decide how to handle the Tahkakollio-Canielli hand. Since it was impossible to know if the deck had been tampered with amongst the confusion, Kremser ruled that the hand be ruled dead. However, Cainelli was unhappy with this decision as he was in need of doubling up. Kremser then ruled that the deck could be reshuffled so the river could be dealt, but would also need the approval of Tahkakollio, who could have decided to have the hand ruled dead and the two get their chips back. After thinking for several minutes, Tahkakollio decided to allow the river to be dealt, and when the 5h came on the river, Cainelli received his double up, while Tahkakollio had lost about a third of his chips. Tahkakollio recovered from that setback to make the final table third in chips, and after a tense back and forth battle with MacPhee when play got to heads-up, eventually collecting 600,000 Euros for finishing 2nd.

The original reporting of the hand was done by the PokerStarsblog.com team.