Oliver Weis Continues Career Year With European Poker Tour Cyprus Main Event Triumph

This year on the tournament circuit has been the best one yet for Germany’s Oliver Weis. The 32-year-old has recorded the two largest live victories of his career in 2024, both for seven-figure paydays. He also secured his first World Series of Poker gold bracelet, taking down the $5,000 short deck during the WSOP Online series.

Weis’ most recent triumph saw him outlast a field of 1,284 entries in the 2024 European Poker Tour Cyprus $5,300 buy-in no-limit hold’em main event. He secured $1,030,000 as the champion, which was $17,817 shy of a new top score. For now the $1,047,816 he earned as the EPT Paris €10,300 buy-in champion back in February of this year will remain his largest payday.

This latest seven-figure windfall grew Weis’ recorded earnings to more than $5.2 million. Roughly half of that prize money has been earned in 2024.

“I’m very happy. This is a tough grind,” Weis told PokerStars TV’s Joe Stapleton in the winner’s interview.

Weis now sits in 13th place in the Card Player Player of the Year race standings presented by Global Poker. This latest win added 1,920 POY points to his hail, bringing the total on the year to 4,940. He has two POY-qualified wins and two more final-table finishes.

The strong turnout for this event resulted in a $6,227,400 prize pool. The top 191 finishers made the money, with big names like two-time bracelet winner Artur Martirosian (99th), EPT champion Nicolas Chouity (48th), Biao Ding (39th), recent WSOP Online main event fifth-place finisher Diogo Coelho (45th), Victoria Livschitz (44th), Fahredin Mustafov (32nd), two-time bracelet winner Santhosh Suvarna (21st), Timo Kamphues (9th), and 2023 runner-up of this event Andrea Dato (8th) all running deep.

The final day began with Weis in the lead and just six contenders remaining. Sweden’s Anton Wigg was the first to fall. The 2010 EPT Copenhagen champion lost a classic preflop race with pocket tens against the A-K of Mikhail Shalamov to finish sixth ($208,720). This was the fourth-largest score of Wigg’s career. He now has nearly $4.9 million in lifetime earnings.

Bobby James’ run came to an end when he ran K-Q into the A-J Georgios Tsouloftas. Neither player connected with the nine-high runout and James was eliminated in fifth place ($271,400). This was by far the largest live tournament showing yet for the British poker player.

Ukraine’s Andriy Lyubovetskiy was eliminated in fourth place when he made a hero call for his tournament life with a rivered pair of deuces. Weis had moved all-in on the end with top two pair, which earned him the pot and the knockout. Lyubovetskiy headed to the payout window to collect his $353,100. This was his third-largest score. The two-time bracelet winner now has more than $2.9 million in recorded cashes to his name.

The next big showdown saw Tsouloftas limp in from the small blind for 200,000 total with A10. Russia’s Mikhail Shalamov moved all-in from the big blind for 5,375,000 with A7 and Tsouloftas called. The board came down 10827Q and Tsouloftas won with a pair of tens and an ace kicker. Shalamov earned his first live six-figure score ($459,000) as the third place finisher.

That set up the lengthy heads-up showdown between Tsouloftas and Weis. The former started with 29,075,000 to play with, while Weis had 9,425,000 when cards got back in the air.

The two went on to battle for a few hours, with Weis able to close the gap as the night wore on. He then overtook the lead by picking off a multi-street bluff from Tsouloftas. Weis then got thin value with third pair against king high before picking off yet another bluff to leave Tsouloftas with just 12 big blinds.

The chips were soon all in the middle with Tsouloftas’ K2 facing Q7 for Weis. The board came down 74355 and Weis made sevens and fives to win the pot and the title. Tsouloftas earned $642,300 as the runner-up, a career-best for the Cyprus native.

Here is a look at the payouts and POY points awarded at the final table:

Photo credits: Rational Intellectual Holdings Ltd. / Manuel Kovsca.