Maria Lampropulos Poker

1. Maria Lampropulos Poker
2. Maria Lampropulos Poker Player

Maria Lampropulos made PokerStars Caribbean Adventure history last week. She became the first female champion in the illustrious PCA Main Event’s 13-year history, taking down the 2018 PCA $10,300 Main Event at the Atlantis Paradise Island resort in the Bahamas for $1,081,100.

Many congratulations to Maria Lampropulos on winning this event and the £1,000,000 first prize. To beat a field this big is an achievement she can be very very proud of. Well done again to her 27-Apr-17, 00:28 #12. With the 2019 PCA started, we take a look back at the most controversial hand of last year’s PCA Main Event. The players involved are none other than the champ herself, Maria Lampropulos and the runner-up Shawn Buchanan. Chip leader Maria Lampropulos is in the SB with Q3 and raises to 275,000. 10 – Maria Constanza Lampropulos. This 37-year-old Greek-born player grew up in Argentina and now lives in London. Lampropulos is no stranger to big final table appearances and has $3.4 million in live tournament winnings at events around the world.

Making the accomplishment even more impressive was the fact it was Lampropulos’ second seven-figure score in less than a year. Back in April 2017, she won the partypoker Millions Live event at Dusk Till Dawn Poker Room & Casino in the UK for £1,000,000.

Clearly, the 36-year-old Argentinian has arrived. Unfortunately, her performance at the PCA final table may be remembered more for all the excessive tanking it featured than anything else.

Lampropulos took her time

To say Lampropulos played slowly and deliberately would be understating it. She took a ton of time to make what appeared to be even the most mundane decisions.

PokerStars went all out on the live stream production. It may have been the highest quality poker stream ever produced. Lampropulos’ excessive tanking rendered it unwatchable at times.

A two-minute preflop tank in an unopened pot with ace-queen in the small blind was one gross example. However, the worst of it was an inexplicable hand where the clock was called on her not once, but twice. She ultimately failed in her attempt to play bluff catcher in the hand, paying off Shawn Buchanan‘s sevens full of aces with just queen-high.

Lampropulos was at least consistent with the excessive amount of time she took on almost every street of every hand. However, from a live stream viewer’s perspective, that just made the whole thing even more maddening.

In big pots with big money on the line, it would be unfair to ask any player to make quicker decisions than they are comfortable with. There is a time and a place where any and all players should be afforded all the time they need. Unopened pots preflop, and hands that look like obvious folds to most, are not those times, no matter where the place.

Plus, if you’re guilty of consistently taking too much time on almost every decision, you cannot expect anyone to be sympathetic to your plight when you find yourself in a real quandary. Think of the boy who cried wolf.

Excessive tanking turns people off

Excessive tankers like Lampropulos need to realize that their behavior is turning people off of the game.

Ultimately that will mean fewer people watching poker. Fewer people watching will mean fewer people playing. Prize pools will suffer.

Those who tank habitually won’t just be ruining what used to be a great source of entertainment for the poker watching public. They’ll ultimately be hurting their own bottom line.

Shot clocks are omnipresent in online poker. Plus, they have been implemented in a growing number of live events around the world to combat the problem. Particularly in high rollers.

The high roller solution

In the wake of the PCA, where he claimed they played less than 15 hands per hour at the final table because of the excessive tanking, German high roller Steffen Sontheimer took to Twitter suggesting tournament directors think about turning off the clock at final tables and setting a specific number of hands that must be played per level.

What about #hands/lvl instead of a certain time on the FT?
Today they played <15hands/hr on the @PokerStarsTV PCA FT. Fucking ridiculous…
Sorry, just can't take that shit.

— Steffen Sontheimer (@RunGo0seRun) January 15, 2018

Tournament director and 2016 WSOP Main Event sixth-place finisher Kenny Hallaert said it would likely only make play last longer.

However, Daniel Negreanu suggested adding a shot clock and playing a set number of hands might work.

It seems a shame that some professionals have a difficult time seeing the forest through the trees here. If everyone saw the big picture on excessive tanking, players could pretty much police themselves.

Unfortunately, they don’t, and it probably won’t be long before every big tournament around the world starts using shot clocks. Or, some other innovative idea like playing a set number of hands per level at final tables.

Then, the next time someone like Lampropulos explodes onto the poker scene with two seven-figure scores in one year, we can be talking more about her great accomplishment and less about how annoying it was to watch.

It was a case of out with old and in with the new for 2018, all-time female great Vanessa Selbst’s retirement paving the way for Argentina’s Maria Lampropoulos to take over the helm with a $1,081,100 scoop of the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Main Event – her second seven-figure score leapfrogging her to 5th spot on the female lifetime money-winners list.

After her record-breaking PartyPoker MILLIONS win in April of last year – the first non-High Roller $million payday for a female – the diminutive Lampropoulos said “It really feels like a magic moment I’m in right now,' and that magic has just been doubled as she took on and beat some of the best players in the world in Paradise Island this week.

With 582 entries to the $10K buy-in flagship event, the prizepool had swollen to a massive $5,645,400 with the likes of Adrian Mateos, Koray Aldemir, Liv Boeree and David Peters making it deep into the money – with Lampropoulos guaranteeing she’d be the last woman standing when she knocked Boeree out herself in 17th spot.

A final table ‘of the highest quality’ was streamed live on PokerStars.tv and as the PS blog stated, viewers ‘were treated to tricks, bluffs, aggression and solidity’ – unsurprising given that Mateos, Aldemir and Canada’s Shawn Buchanan all have excellent pedigree – almost $30million between them in tournament earnings. Throw in the new female on the block and it was a poker masterclass.

With the short stacks falling early on the 6th day of play, Spanish sensation Adrian Mateos made his bid for the title but the swings and roundabouts of poker fortune conspired against him – a huge hand against Buchanan ending his dreams in 4th spot…

Germany’s Koray Aldemir certainly wasn’t scared to get it all-in when needed, an outrageous bluff holding pocket 3’s grabbing the attention of the Twitter-followers of the PCA…

…but eventually he too succumbed as he was first short-stacked and then had to watch as his last-gasp effort was hit by trips, the river king pairing his hand but too little, too late…

Maria Lampropulos Poker

Heads-up for the title and it would be history in the making – no female ever winning the PCA in its 13 years – and Lampropoulos did it in style, pulling away from Buchanan and finishing him off with a flopped pair, her boyfriend Ivan Luca rushing down to greet the new PCA champ…

'I am very proud,' Lampropulos said afterwards. 'Every woman here - dealers, floors - every woman is very happy for me, and I'm grateful for that,' adding: 'I am very, very happy. I'm so excited. This is incredible. I know that this is hard to believe for everybody. It's my second huge main event, and I'm very thankful.'

Maria Lampropulos Poker Player

2018 PCA Main Event Results