Here at PokerStars Blog we’ve been occasionally looking in at the goings-on in Spain this week at the EPT Open Madrid festival. There the €1,100 Main Event moved into its second and last Day 1 flight on Thursday, culminating an exciting 22-event series.
In between checking the progress of our intrepid colleague Jack Stanton — a.k.a. Poker’s Jack Stanton — who won an entry into the Main, we received news of a happy reunion taking place involving three other familiar faces from the PokerStars Players No-Limit Hold’em Championship that played out earlier this year.
No less than three of the more than 300 Platinum Pass winners found themselves at the same EPT Open Madrid Main Event table, a moment chronicled and shared by one of them, UK player Asif Warris.
From the Bahamas to Madrid: Asif, Samir, and Ramon together again
The amiable Asif (in the foreground) won his Platinum Pass after winning the 2018 Persistence Award at year’s end, a suitable recognition after his having tried many other avenues toward securing the entry.
Meanwhile Samir Akhoulou of Germany (in Seat 1) won his Platinum Pass at the Belgian Poker Championship in the Crazy Pineapple Hand Challenge.
And of course everyone knows Ramon Colillas, especially in Spain. The Barcelona-based player (in what looks like Seat 4, actually) secured his Platinum Pass to play in the PSPC in January after finishing first on the Campeonato de España de Poker Leaderboard. At the time the $30K package was three times as much as Colillas had ever won in a poker tournament.
He’d go on to win the PSPC and $5.1 million top prize, catapulting him to fourth on the Spaniards’ all-time money list and landing him a spot on Team PokerStars as well.
Good vibes to our PP friends and everyone else at EPT Open Madrid! Also, let us know if you happen to spot Jack.