Gavin Griffin Claims EPT Grand Final Title

By Dan
Published: Tuesday, April 03, 2007

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In 2004, Gavin Griffin became the youngest player to win a World Series of Poker bracelet (his record has since been broken). This week, he became the youngest to take down a European Poker Tour championship, as he won the Season 3 Grand Final in Monte Carlo. His haul, an eye-popping €1,825,010, or $2,429,103.

Coiffed in pink to show his support for breast cancer awareness, Griffin raised $15,000 for the cause through a donation from Poker Stars, the online poker room on which he qualified in a satellite. Poker Stars also matched any donations its players made. Griffin said that he has a passion for the fight against breast cancer because his girlfriend was afflicted with the disease when she was 21-years-old (she is fine now). The two are planning to participate in a 39-mile charity walk in September to raise more money.

After this win, it looks like Griffin will have no problem finding funds to donate.

He started the final day as the chip leader with almost 2.6 million. The next three players were barely within a million chips. Despite his sizeable lead, Griffin did not have an easy time achieving his victory. He did make his way up to almost 3.9 million chips after busting Josh Prager in fifth place, but a series of big pots, raked by his opponents, took a big chunk out of his stack. He lost around 800,000 in a double-up of Soren Kongsgaard when his A-J could not find a pair against Kongsgaard’s 8-8.

Then he lost 1.2 million to red-hot Canadian, Marc Karam (who was actually a slight chip leader after Prager’s ouster) when Karam hit runner-runner flush.

Griffin got healthy quickly, though, knocking out both Kristian Kjondaln and Kongsgaard on his way to a heads-up match with Karam. The elimination of Kongsgaard must have been particularly satisfying because it was with A-J, the same hand he had when he doubled Kongsgaard up earlier.

Griffin had the lead going into heads-up play, but both he and Karam were doing just fine in chips. They dodged and weaved each other for quite some time, pushing and pulling, never really getting anywhere. Then the big hand went down.

With K-5 on the button and the big blind at 50,000, Griffin raised to 150,000 and Karam re-raised to 400,000. Griffin called and the two saw a flop of 2-3-4. Karam led out for half a million chips, only to be raised to 2 million by Griffin. Karam, covered by about 500,000, then pushed all-in. Griffin thought and thought, even telling Karam that he thought Karam had the best hand. He was right. After Griffin called with his open-ended straight draw and overcard, Karam showed 4-7 for top pair. It was far from hopeless, though, as Griffin had a ton of outs. Nothing came on the turn, but the river produced a King, giving Griffin the better pair and the championship.