The 2023 European Poker Tour Barcelona festival kicked off with the €1,100 buy-in Estrellas Poker Tour main event. The tournament attracted a massive field of 7,398 entries, setting a record for the largest live tournament ever put on.
This tournament played out over the course of eight days inside Casino Barcelona. It was originally slated to take seven, but an extra round was needed to narrow the record field down to a champion. After the eight starting flights had been completed, day 2 began on Friday, Aug. 25 with all remaining contenders in the money.
The previous record was set by the 6,313 turnouts for this same tournament when it was last held in 2022. That means that there was a 17 percent increase, year-over-year.
There were 3,291 unique players, which means that 4,107 re-entries were made during the event. Players from 86 nations turned out for this tournament. The unprecedented attendance numbers resulted in a final prize pool of €7,102,080, or more than $7.7 million when rendered in USD.
Lucien Cohen
The top 1,109 finishers ultimately made the money, with payouts ranging from $1,890 all the way up to $730,328. That top sum was secured by Lucien Cohen(pictured). This was the second-largest payday for the Frenchman, with his top score being the nearly $1.2 million he took home as the winner of the 2011 EPT Deauville main event. The 59-year-old Parisian now has moe than $2.3 million in lifetime cashes to his name.
This was his second POY-qualified score of the year, with one final-table finish in a €550 buy-in side event at the French Poker Series stop in Paris this summer. As a result of his big win in Spain, Cohen has climbed inside the top 300 in the 2023 POY standings presented by Global Poker.
