Lendvai wins IPT Venice

Typically, it pays to enter the final table of a poker tournament as one of the chip leaders, as that’s where the winner usually comes from. However, the 2010 Italian Poker Tour: Venice tournament proved to be an exception to this rule. Though he came into the final table as the smallest stack, Tamas Lendvai of Hungry walked away with the title, scoring a win of €235,000 (or about $311,000).

Just over 500 players participated in the tournament, which carried a buy-in of €2,200. The event was the largest in IPT history, and had a prize pool of €979,000.

Entering the final table, it was Ali Tekitamgac who was the chip leader, with a stack of over 2.25 million chips. Conversely, Lendvai found himself at the bottom of the heap, with a relatively short stack of only 429,000 chips.

But Lendvai, a 38-year-old poker pro, battled his way into heads up play against Italian Davide Cerrato, who had entered the final table with over 2 million in chips. After Lendvai had established a chip lead, he moved all-in preflop with KT, only to be called by Cerrato’s A5. Neither player improved on the flop, but a king on the turn saw Lendavi in position to win the tournament. When the river paired a 9 already on the board, it was enough to knock Cerrato out in second place and hand the title to Lendvai.

Though the win was Cerrato’s biggest of his carrer, he does have some other notable results – especially in 2010. Back in January, he cashed in the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure tournament, finishing 20^th and taking home $87,500. He also cashed in this year’s World Series of Poker Main event, finishing 631^st and winning $21,327. However, this win will surpass the other results by far, and brings his career earnings in tournament poker up to nearly $500,000.

 The Italian Poker Tour is sponsored by PokerStars. The online poker room sponsors a variety of regional and national poker tours around the world, the largest of which include the North American Poker Tour, the European Poker Tour, the Asia Pacific Poker Tour and the Latin American Poker Tour.