Frenchman Valentin Messina wins the 5th France Poker Tour

The Poker Mania that has spread all over Europe has attacked France too, and the France Poker Tour tournament, which ended January 28, just completed its 5th edition. Another indication of the popularity of the game among the French can be seen by looking at the number of players. In its first year, the number of participants at the tournament was three hundred; this year they reached 35,000!

Tournament organizers offered three ways for players to qualify for the final tournament which was held at the Aviation Club de France in Paris – the new French Pantheon of poker. The first option was to pay a 1,000 Euros buy-in, the second qualifying through online satellite tournaments and the third option was to qualify through one of the 13 live tournaments that were part of a national tour.

The winner of the tournament, Valentin Messina, is a Parisian engineer who plays poker at a semi-professional level. In the final heads-up, which lasted 5 hours, he managed to beat the American-Lebanese Kassem “Freddy” Deeb, a professional poker player and holder of 2 WSOP bracelets.

In third place came Frenchwoman Almira Skripchenko. A professional chess player who also enjoys poker, Almira discovered poker in 2003. She happened to be at the Aviation Club and joined in a few games, a few years later she now finishes third and is the French women’s champion of poker.
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