Daisuke Ogita Wins France Poker Series Main Event At EPT Monte Carlo

Daisuke Ogita – Photo Credit: Manuel Kovsca, Rational Holdings Limited

Diasuke Ogita rose to the top in a large field of competitors to win the France Poker Series main event that was part of the European Poker Tour Monte Carlo tournament series on April 30 at Sporting Monte-Carlo. The Japanese poker player grabbed the top prize worth $328,661 to take his career earnings above $1 million. “I’m very happy, I was lucky,” said Ogita to PokerNews reporters after the win. He continued, “I have a small trophy from Paris and now I got the big one. It’s heavy!”

This was Ogita’s fourth tournament win, and also his fourth cash of 2023. Ogita won a €5,150 no-limit hold’em six-max event at EPT Paris back in February. His Card Player Player of the Year points total for 2023 now stands at 1,944, good for 29th place in this year’s race sponsored by Global Poker.

The €1,100 buy-in no-limit hold’em event saw a record-breaking turnout during four starting flights with 2,138 entries building a prize pool worth $2,196,154, which is the largest ever for this event. The top 321 players all cashed for at least $1,766 in prize money. Every player remaining in the tournament returned in the money for Day 2, and by the end of play just 55 players survived.

Day 3 saw that returning field of 55 play all the way down to the final table of eight. Notables that made a deep run and exited on the penultimate day of the tournament included PokerStars Ambassador Benajmin Spragg (21st), and World Series of Poker gold bracelet winners Jason Wheeler (25th) and Renat Bohdanov (28th).

Ogita was second in chips when the final table started, and he quickly scored a knockout punch by eliminating Maksym Mamon in eighth place. He then took out Stefan Dimitrov in sixth place a while later to take control of the chip lead with five players left. Ogita also took out Quentin Laugt in fifth place to continue pacing his final opponents.

A lengthy three-handed battle saw the chips and the lead change hands multiple times before Tomas Patka fell at the hands of Ogita in third place. That gave Ogita a better than 2:1 chip advantage at the start of heads-up play against Rubens Sellam. There was one double up waiting for Sellam, but he never made a serious challenge for the lead.

The final hand saw Sellam get all in with 104 in the hole with the flop reading 1052, and Ogita had him covered holding AQ. The turn and river ran out JQ to bring the tournament to a close. Sellam took home $205,376 as the runner-up that was the largest cash ever for the Frenchman.

Final Table Results

The European Poker Tour Monte Carlo tournament series will continue running until May 6 at Sporting Monte-Carlo, and you can find the schedule for the series right here.