Inside the multimillion-Euro poker tournament that sparks James Bond comparisons

Daily Mirror

10-05-2025

The European Poker Tour has held events in Monte Carlo for 20 years and there are reasons why the billionaires' playground continues to attract big crowds year on year
It's Tuesday morning in Monaco and a small crowd has gathered at the entrance to the Salle des Etoiles. The 'etoiles' in question, the stars embedded into the roof of the main poker room at Sporting Monte Carlo, are slowly fading out of view as the roof slides open, unveiling a beautiful view of Monte Carlo bay.
It's the second day of the PokerStars European Poker Tour Monte Carlo, one of poker's most prestigious events, and one which poker commentator Joe Stapleton considers one of the best experiences for any poker player with a few thousand Euros to spare and a dream of playing the game with the world 's best. I'm due to interview him on the other side of the tournament venue at 10.45am, but we agree to wander down to reap the benefits of something that only happens once per day.
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'I think that as far as the way that poker is regarded, there's different ways of looking at it,' Stapleton says. 'Some people look at it as the World Series of Poker and a Vegas thing, some people look at it as a home game thing.
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"Some people look at it as a smoky room kind of thing. But some people look at it like the James Bond, tuxedos, Ferraris type of thing, and you get a little bit of that here.
'And I think that's the sort of thing that is always going to be appealing - especially to people who haven't ever experienced it for themselves. I think Monte Carlo specifically is a great first experience for an EPT event.'
It's not just the first-timers who find themselves standing and watching in awe. Noah Boeken was here for the first edition of the tournament back in 2005, and even now - aged 44 - he's excited to soak in the atmosphere.
'I love this room,' he says. 'I just sent my girlfriend a video of when the roof goes open at the start of the day and the end of the day when the curtains come up. It's beautiful. I love big spaces and this room is amazing.'
Boeken was one of the young bucks who won a title during the first season of the tour, He earned €147,679 for a victory in Copenhagen a full 20 years ago, and he's one of only a handful still standing from that era.
'You'll always remember season one,' he says. 'Rob Hollink won the first one here, a Dutch guy, a friend of mine. I won season one Copenhagen and that was on TV.
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'I remember they built a stage the same as they do now but there were 200 people watching. You can't imagine it now but back then it was like 'oh my god, the final's going on'.
'It's just amazing that this tour is still going on for 20 years and I'm happy to still be there. I used to be the youngest and now... I'm not the oldest but I'm not the youngest any more.'
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Day two is when players get into the money. It has cost them €5,300 to take part, though some have qualified for less than that via satellite events, and the top 175 finishers - from a field of 1,195 - will lock up a minimum of €8,500. The winner? They'll leave with a cool million.
Boeken is one of those to survive a tense hour or so of play as we slowly get down from 178 to 175. He makes sure not to go home empty-handed, eventually finishing 129th and winning a shade under $10,000 - his biggest live cash of 2025 so far but a drop in the ocean compared to some of the six-figure scores from earlier in his career.
Stapleton, meanwhile, will be part of the live coverage, along with long-time host James Hartigan. It was back in 2008 that Hartigan reported on EPT Monte Carlo for PokerStars for the first time, and he has likened his task to a Test Match Special commentator, complementing the entertainment provided naturally by the players and the action while keeping the viewers interested.
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Sometimes that can be easy, too, with some big names from other worlds often taking to the felt. Chris Eubank Jr is in town for a specially-arranged cash game, while athletes and film stars have stopped by in years past.
"I remember kevin hart being here in 2017," Hartigan recalls. "Obviously we've had a lot of sports stars here over the years, Boris Becker, Rafa Nadal... we've had charity events here which people have come in specifically for, Neymar of course has played here for a few years. That's a huge part of poker, the fact that you never know who you're going to be sat down with, it's the only game in the world where you can be playing with elite professionals and celebrities and some bloke who lives three streets from you."
There are still a few poker pros from those early years who keep coming back, too. 'I would say very few, but ironically what happened... you see people come and go, you see a few consistent faces, but post-pandemic you suddenly saw a lot of the faces you hadn't seen for maybe 10 or 15 years came back. Because they had rediscovered poker online and then wanted to get back on the live circuit,' Hartigan adds.
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'But there's one name who I'd always say is a consistent thread is Patrik Antonius. He lives here and jokes about the fact that he can literally walk to the venue, but he's also one of those few players who has just consistently remained competitive and relevant for all of those years, playing the highest stakes, still playing the super high rollers here. He is probably the person I associate with Monaco more than any other, partly because it's his home town but also because he still comes here and still plays the events here.'
Antonius, a Finnish pro who won his first EPT main event in Baden, Austria in 2005, is among a bevy of players looking to join an elite group of two-time winners. Victoria Coren Mitchell was the first to do the double, winning her first in 2006 and her second some eight years later, with just two more players following suit, but no one has won twice at the same venue.
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That's not for lack of trying. Walking around the Salle des Etoiles during the opening days (there are so many entrants that day 1 is split over two flights on Sunday and Monday) I spot several former Monte Carlo champions including Nicolas Chouity (who won €1.7m for his first-place finish in 2010), Steve O'Dwyer (€1.2m in 2013) and Adrian Mateos (€1.1m in 2015 and another €1.4m in the Super High Roller in 2022).
The 2025 edition of that Super High Roller is being played a short walk away in The Americas Room at Monte Carlo Bay Hotel & Resort, where the vibe feels a lot more relaxed. It costs €100,000 just to sit down, and there's more than €2m for the winner and €1.3m for second, but one of the new millionaires - clad in merch from three separate poker companies - is nondescript enough that you could comfortably dismiss him as just a random twentysomething European if you passed him in the street.
Not that this is true of everyone playing for big money, of course. 'There was one guy - I don't remember his name - he showed up to play the €100k Super High Roller one year and I heard that his boat had docked, he had no plans to play, he heard about it, he drove his Ferrari off the boat up to the front door and entered the event,' Stapleton says.
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'I think he was out in seven or eight minutes, back in his Ferrari, back on the boat an hour later. That's the kind of story you don't really hear that often, especially in places other than this.'
Hartigan and Stapleton both joke that, with the knowledge they have now as enthusiastic amateurs, they could be more than competitive in a 2005 Monte Carlo field. Back then, even the best poker players knew just a fraction of what they do now
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'If you look at how it was then, it was cowboys, it was crazy people, it was people with money but people that didn't know much about poker - including the pros,' Boeken says. 'We were pros, we were better than the rest, but if you put us [in games] now with our skill levels from back then, we would stand no chance.'
One thing that's consistent, though, is the willingness of so many to keep coming back. The European Poker Tour used to run like a football season, from September to May, with Monte Carlo branded as the grand final. These days it's just another stop on the tour, except it isn't really 'just another stop' when you're there.
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'I think, having won or final-tabled this event, any time you go back in that room the memories would come flooding back,' Hartigan says. 'Even if you bust day 1, even if it doesn't work out for you this time, it's still going to have a very positive memory to play in that space.
'I think if you look at all of the stops on the EPT they all have their strengths, they all have their plus points, and that's why i can't give an answer to 'which is your favourite EPT, but I say it and i mean it when i say this is the best poker room we play in.
'I call it the most beautiful poker room in the world, and it is. The fact that you have, and I know that for reasons of tv we often have to have the curtains closed and the roof closed, but the fact that you can have that view over Monte Carlo Bay, the fact that you can have that roof open like Blofeld's volcano, it's just amazing, it's an incredible experience.'
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When I land back in London, the tournament is still going. The final table is scheduled to take place on Saturday, with each of the top eight finishers locking up a six-figure payday.
After that, some of the players will take part in other European tournaments, while others might take some time off before going to Vegas over the summer. One thing's already guaranteed, though - there will be a new name on the trophy, with all the previous winners falling by the wayside before the penultimate day.
Those going after a second win will have their next chance in Barcelona in August, with further EPT events scheduled for Malta and Prague before the end of the year, and the appetite will always be there for some. As Boeken puts it: "I'm still chasing that second win but i'm going to get there one day."