PCA World Cup: Germany Wins, PokerStrategist In 3rd Place
The PokerStars World Cup of Poker came to an end a couple of days ago, when team Germany took the gold medal. Team New Zealand came in second and Team Italy, which had a PokerStrategist in it, finished third.
The PokerStars Caribbean Adventure goes on, but one of its most important events, the World Cup of Poker, has finished. 45 players split into 9 countries battled it out in the finals for a prize pool of $290,000. Germany representatives were the last ones standing and they collected $100,000 for their achievement.
This is the 5th edition of the World Cup of Poker already, and big names could not miss the opportunity to win some big money: Daniel Negreanu, Vicky Corey, Marcin Horecki, Luca Pagano and more were seen leading their teams into the finals.
However, the Germans were the better players this time, as they managed to defeat both Team Italy (3rd) and Team New Zealand (2nd) after 16 hours of poker. Last year's champions, Team USA, were not able to defend their title and they had to settle for the 4th place.
After the end of the tournament, Team Germany captain Jan Heitman said "This has been a great experience, a really great tournament. We
got lucky a bit but overall we played very good poker."
PokerStrategy was present in this tournament as well, through our Italian member, Gerardo Fabrizio "
gera22" Villa. He managed to qualify for the World Cup of Poker thanks to a series of freerolls and he was interviewed before leaving for the Bahamas:
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| Max Pescatori, Gerardo Villa and Dario Minieri |
PokerStrategy: Hi Gera, congratulations for qualifying to the Pokerstars World Cup of Poker! You are a member of our community from almost a year and
this is the opportunity to know something more about you.
gera22: Hi everyone, my name is Gerardo and i live in a small town near
Ravenna,
I am 23 years old and I am an electrician. My hobbies are playing
football, video games and obviously playing poker.
PokerStrategy: You had your qualification via a series of freerolls,
without spending a single dollar.
Tell us something about that: how did
it begin?
gera22: First of all I want to thank 
valentik72 and
PokerStrategy.it, because I knew about the freeroll by reading his
post on our forum just few minutes before it began. In the first
freeroll there were 9 tickets to win and a field of 552 players; I took
one of the tickets and I played in an SnG with 18 players. I managed to
win one of the two tickets in the SnG prize pool so I became a member of Team Italy.
Along with the other
winner and other two top Italian players we fought on December 7th, against eight other countries in a
series of Sit and Gos, each one of us played in a different tourney
against foreign players. Thanks to two first, a third and a
fourth place, we have been the best and got the qualification to the
awesome WPC in Bahamas!
PokerStrategy:
How do you think you'll play this tournament? You
think you'll read some strategy book or other stuff before leaving?
gera22: I actually thought just a bit about the tourney, since I already don't know its structure, but I'm not planning to modify my
play, since that's what brought me here.
I'll just go on
reading PokerStrategy articles, because they have always been the only
ones I read and I don't want potential bad influences. I will play the
tournament to win, but I'm already so happy for this fantastic
experience, no matter how it'll go.
We will have another interview with our Italian PokerStrategist very soon, so stay tuned for updates.
