UK pro Sam Trickett wins Partouche Poker Tour Championship

Sam Trickett is no stranger to success at the poker tables, considering the UK poker pro has already won a handful of major tournaments in his young career, in addition to being one of the top high-stakes cash-game players in the game, and his latest victory in the Partouche Poker Tour Main Event this weekend will lonely bolster his standing as one of the top young players in poker.

After a two month delay between the final table participants being decided and the actual playing of the final table, Trickett and his eight competitors reconvened in Cannes, France to play for the coveted title and the €1 million first-prize this weekend. Trickett entered the final table as the chip-leader with 2.6 million in chips, but virtually every player at the final table was in striking distance as three other players controlled stacks of over 2 million chips and the short-stack had nearly 1 million chips.

But in the end Trickett would prove to be too strong a player (as well as catching the right cards at the right time) and after 2011 WSOP bracelet winner Oleksii Kovalchuk was eliminated in 3^rd place Trickett found himself facing a 2-to-1 chip disadvantage over his heads-up opponent Salman Behbehani, which he managed to overcome on his way to picking up his third cash of the year for over $1 million.

Here is a look at how the final table fared at the 2011 Partouche Poker Tour Main Event:

1.       Samuel Trickett - €1,000,000

2.       Salman Behbehani - €600,000

3.       Oleksii Kovalchuk - €379,760

4.       Ilan Boujenah - €300,000

5.       Roger Hairabedian - €230,000

6.       Alexander Dovzhenko - €190,000

7.       Mustapha Kanit - €160,000

8.       Alexandre Coussy - €130,000

9.       Mads Wissing - €100,000

Trickett first burst on to the poker scene with a six-cash, including two final tables, performance at the 2010 WSOP, which he improved upon a few months later by winning the Party Poker World Open VI. He then went on to crush the high-stakes cash-games in Macau (earning over £1 million) which led to a feature story in Bluff Magazine, bringing the young pro into the poker spotlight.

If 2010 was a breakout year than 2011 has to be considered a career year for Trickett, or any other poker player for that matter. Trickett, a sponsored poker pro for Titan Poker, started the year with a couple of big scores in the High-Roller tournaments at the Aussie Millions which earned the young poker star nearly $2.9 million. With his Partouche Poker Tour win he now has nearly $4.5 million in tournament earnings thus far in 2011 -with a little help from a few five and six-figure scores as well, including a 4^th place finish in the $5k PLO Tournament at the 2011 WSOP Europe. Not too bad for a guy who was relatively unknown outside of the UK before 2010!