Poker Player Blog

At the close of the fifth day of main event play Andreas Krause became a champion with a pair of fives. This was the first year the Merit Cyprus Classic was sponsored by Full Tilt and the first time it was won by a relative unknown (to Americans at least). Andreas Krause walks away with $415,780. Nothing to sneeze at.

The annual event that takes place in the Turkish owned portion of Cyprus attracted 181 players this year including my favorite to win Michael Mizrachi of November Nine fame. There were a number of European professionals present as well as some Poker Stars pros on hand to fill the tables. At the beginning of play with a huge chip lead it looked liked Nicolas Chouity was bound to win but Krause beat out everyone to come out on top. Here’s the final count as reported by our friends over at pokernews.com

Andreas Krause 5,795,000

Mathieu Clavet 0

Van Marcus 0

Zsolt Vasvenszki 0

Ahmet Ucali 0

Hakan Dalokay 0

Andreas Krause hails from Heilbrown, Germany and has 15 first place wins to date. This year alone Krause has had three money finishes. Overall professionally he has won over $1.5 million and had 114 money finishes. According to his playing record 2007 was Krause’s big year as he took home five first place wins.  Maybe he’ll try the same again this year.