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Monday, March 26, 2007

Actor wins leg of Grosvenor Poker Tour

By Sarah Polson

The winner of the Grosvenor Poker Tour event in Cardiff may look a little familiar to BBC fans. He is none other than actor Michael Greco who used to play Beppe di Marco on EastEnders.

The Cardiff event was Greco's first major poker win. He took home nearly £100,000 after besting a field of 314 players.

"This means so much to me, and I'd like to thank Blue Square and Grosvenor for organizing such a well-structured event," Greco said immediately after the tournament.

Greco started off playing poker in ring games at the Grosvenor Victoria Casino in London, but has since shifted focus to tournament play. In the past year he's had several good showings in tournaments leading up to this win.

His prior experience may have been the extra boost he needed to win this one. Coming into the final table, Greco was the short-stack, and it was a difficult battle for his victory.

Fortunately for Greco, it didn't take him long to double-up his stack. On just the second hand of the final table, his pocket aces held up against Hoss Parhizkar's K-T.

That double-up helped get him out of danger of being eliminated. From there Greco progressed to end up as one of the three players left at the final table. After taking out Roberto Romanello, he had the chip lead going into heads-up play.

Heads-up was relatively short as Greco took on IT specialist Parhizkar. The hand that did Parhizkar in was his J-T versus Greco's K-9.

Greco hit a king on the flop, and both of them got all their chips in after a nine came on the turn, giving Parhizkar a straight draw. Greco's "No queen, no seven" chant worked, though, when a jack came on the river to solidify his win.

The final table results were as follows:

Place	Name	Prize
1st	Michael Greco	£97,680
2nd	Hoss Parhizkar	£51,980
3rd	Roberto Romanello	£34,650
4th	Steve Craig	£25,200
5th	Dave Smith	£18,900
6th	Simon Zach	£15,750
7th	Elliot Bowker	£12,600
8th	Ian Nelson	£9,450
9th	Kayshan Muthy	£6,300