Franck Kalfon, who runs a textile firm, has been a regular fixture in Paris cardrooms – the famous Aviation Club in particular – for the last ten years. At first a cash game player, his eighth place finish in the 2008 Grand Prix de Paris (for €39,330) convinced him to dedicate more time to tournaments.
In addition to multiple wins in Paris events, he has made the money twice before at EPTs, both times in Deauville (39th in Season 6 for €14,700, 40th in Season 7 for €17,000). Reaching this year's final table represents the best result of his career.
“I'm living a dream,” says Kalfon. “I'll play to win,” he added, not worried about being short-stacked.
Chemistry student [Removed:4] has been playing poker for four years. He mainly plays tournaments but doesn’t consider himself a professional and Deauville is his first EPT cash. His normal milieu is smaller buy-in events like FPS Amneville in May 2012, where he finished seventh for €11,800, his biggest live cash so far.
Rudelitz came to Deauville with a group of German friends including PokerStars.de Snowfest champion Marius Pospiech and Jonas Lauck who won the FPS High Roller Event here in Deauville. All of these guys will be cheering him on from the rail at the Deauville final table.
Since playing his first EPT in 2008, serial qualifier Jeff “jeff710” Hakim has attended around 30 EPTs. “I almost always win my seat online," says Hakim. "But now I come regardless, even if I don’t qualify. I’m not going to miss any EPTs.”
Hakim’s first EPT Main Event cash was at EPT Snowfest in Austria in Season 6, and his best result so far — out of six EPT cashes — was 16th at EPT Berlin in Season 7.
“I’ve definitely won more money online (he won the PokerStars 500 in 2008 for $91,500) but winning a live event means everything,” he says. “I don’t think I will ever move on from poker, I won’t feel complete as a player, until I’ve won a major title.”
He is the short stack going in to the final. But he also started Day 5 as virtually the shortest stack, then managed to turn 24 big blinds into more than 1.7 million in the space of 90 minutes.
Travel agent Joseph El Khoury is one of 15 Lebanese players who competed at EPT Deauville and there are still three left –- taking them from 1.92% of the field on Day 1 to 37.5% for the final.
Lebanon is the current EPT Country of the Year. Like his fellow countrymen, Jeffrey Hakim and Walid Bou Habbib, El Khoury is an EPT regular who has played around 20 EPTs in the last five years. He has cashed twice, both times in Prague, but his best live result before now was fifth place at WPT Cyprus last summer. That give him a $65,770 payday but he’s guaranteed at least €60,000 here in Deauville.
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