19-year-old Finnish online pro Jens Kyllönen won the European Poker Tour Scandinavian Open in Copenhagen. The young Finn received 6,541,920 DKK in prize money.
The final table in the EPT Scandinavian Open was dominated by poker players from the Nordic countries. Two Danes, two Swedes, two Finns, a Norwegian and a Frenchman (!) battled it out for the prestigious EPT title in Casino Copenhagen.
Jens Kyllönen took the top spot after heads-up victory against Sweden?s Peter ?Nalle? Hedlund. In the final hand it was all-in pre-flop with Kyllönen holding pocket jacks and Hedlund sitting with A-J. No help on the board came for the 40-year-old Sweden and Kyllönen had won the tournament.
“I feel really good. I don’t think I have realized yet what I have done. It feels really great,” Kyllönen said after the tournament.
“I felt like I had an edge on the players so I tried to keep the pots smaller in general and played very aggressively. I won key coin flips and I think I played pretty well.”
He already has big plans for the money he won.
“I’ll spend a big part of it on an apartment. I’ll also be playing the rest of the EPT circuit this season.”
Final-table results from EPT Scandinavian Open:
1. Jens Kyllonen 6,541,920 DKK
2. Peter Hedlund 3,703,392 DKK
3. Anders Langset 2,151,072 DKK
4. Jussi Nevanlinna 1,641,024 DKK
5. Petter Petterson 1,352,736 DKK
6. Rasmus Nielsen 1,046,448 DKK
7. Eric Larcheveque 842,688 DKK
8. Jonas Klausen 598,752 DKK
A 19-year-old Finn shocked the Scandinavian poker world to its core when he came out of nowhere to take the PokerStars EPT Copenhagen title in Denmark Saturday.
“I feel really good,” Jens Kyllonen told PokerListings following the impressive win. “I don’t think I have realized yet what I have done. It feels really great.”
Marked by an aggressive Scandinavian style of poker, the final table actually took just five hours to play out, in contrast to the epic 14-hour battle won by Tim Vance in Copenhagen last year.
Play began just after 2 p.m. at Casino Copenhagen with Dane Rasmus Nielsen stealing the headlines by making back-to-back final tables here following a fourth place in 2008.
But after losing a huge pot to fellow chip leader Anders Langset in the first level of play, the Dane seemed rattled, and it wasn’t long before his dream of an EPT title was dashed.
Another Dane, Jonas Klausen, was actually the first player to exit the final table, and the only non-Scandinavian at the table, Frenchman Eric Larchveque, was also out before Nielsen took sixth.
Swede Petter Petterson went out fifth before the previously quiet Kyllonen began making his move toward the title.
First he won a coin flip against fellow Finn Jussi Nevanlinna after making a rather loose call with a weak ace. Then, once Nevanlinna had bowed out fourth, Kyllonen won another massive flip to take the lead from Langset.
“I felt like I had an edge on the players so I tried to keep the pots smaller in general and played very aggressively,” Kyllonen said. “I won key coin flips and I think I played pretty well.”
Eventually he would finish off the rather inexperienced Langset, who claimed he’d only been playing poker three weeks before the tournament started, by getting the Norwegian to push in drawing dead.
Starting heads-up with Swede Peter Hedlund with more than a 2-1 chip advantage, it didn’t take long for Kyllonen to finish him off.
Donning a pink “Teenage Millionaire” hat, Kyllonen grabbed the 6,541,920 DKK first-place prize and all the glory of the EPT Copenhagen title when his pocket jacks held against the rather entertaining Hedlund’s ace-jack after about two dozen hands.
“I’ll spend a big part of it on an apartment,” Kyllonen said. “I’ll also be playing the rest of the EPT circuit this season.”
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