Mega Poker Series Madrid Draws Record Numbers

The Mega Poker Series, MPS for short, finished its stint in Madrid this week drawing record numbers of attendance to the field of its main event. Sponsored by online poker site Poker770, the abundance of participants has been partly attributed to the provision of myriad qualifiers and satellite tournaments hosted by the poker room to send many of its own internet-based poker players to the tournament.

The MPS Madrid Main Event, held at the Casino Gran Madrid, attracted a total of 507 players to the 5-day championship tournament. The majority of the field was made up of European poker players, many from the event’s home-base of Spain, as well as a notable sum of Brazilian and Canadian poker players.

After several long days of rigorous action on the felt, the final table came down to its last nine standing, made up of seven native Spaniards, one Frenchman and one Portuguese player. In the end, the Spaniards would win out as the final 5 participants at the table were all of Spanish descent

The imminent skills of Samuel Bernabeu emerged victorious as he claimed a munificent €65,000 prize after cutting a deal with his final two opponents. The moment the 4th place finisher, Antonio Dieguez, was eliminated from the table, Bernabeu became the clear leader, inciting an easy allocation of the prize and placements between himself, 2nd place winner Manuel Ledesma and 3rd place finisher Inigo Rodriguez.

Poker770 took direction from Thomas Keller, tournament director of the EPT, as well as a few other experienced assistants, to pull off its unique sponsorship of the Mega Poker Series Madrid, now in its third season. To make things more interesting, the main event featured a €770 buy-in, 77-minute blind structure and 77,000 in starting chips to each competitor.

A plethora of satellite competitions were held at the online poker room, as well as live satellite tournaments at Belgium’s Casino de Spa, Poker Royale Casino in Wiener Nuestadt, Austria and, of course, Casino Gran Madrid, where the main event took place from June 13th-17th. Poker770 held special qualifiers in its online poker room for as little as €0.24.

The organizers of the MPS Madrid Main Event were only anticipating an estimated 300 entries, thus proffered a guaranteed prize pool of €200,000. When the number of entries rose to a staggering 507, the tournament saw an overlay that resulted in a final prize pool of €344,250. A total of 63 players would finish in the money bubble with the nine final tablers cashing in for anywhere from €5,800 to €65,000 in prize money.

Although the MPS website, megapokersieries.com, currently lists the location of stage 4 of the Mega Poker Series as “to be announced”, sources at Poker770 report that the next event will be held in Croatia in October of this year. Poker770 is already planning a multitude of promotional events, including satellites and qualifiers, to ensure its loyal base of online poker players are able to grab some great seats in the Croatian leg of the Mega Poker Series.