Stephen Song Wins European Poker Tour Barcelona Main Event for $1.4 Million

At 29, Stephen Song has to wait until at least 2035 to be considered for the Poker Hall of Fame, and unless he decides to step away from playing poker, he’ll use those years to build his poker resume, which is already loaded with big wins in big buy-in events.

This weekend, Song added yet another impressive result to his already stellar poker career by winning the €5,000 European Poker Tour Main Event for a career-best €1,290,386 ($1.4 million). The event, sponsored by PokerStars, had 1,469 entries (504 re-buys), who generated a prize pool of €9,578,750. Of those, 109 earned their way into the tourney through qualifiers on PokerStars.

It was the 20th anniversary of EPT Barcelona, which started when Song was a little boy in Connecticut, doing whatever little boys in Connecticut do. Now, he’s a poker multi-millionaire with nearly $8 million in tournament winnings to his name. With more than a dozen victories as recorded by the Hendon Mob, they include six World Series of Poker Circuit rings, one WSOP bracelet, and a World Poker Tour Prime victory in 2022, which was his largest cash up this title.

The EPT win is Song’s first victory of the year. He won his sixth WSOP Circuit in December of 2023. But he’s finish in the top nine of events nine times in 2024, including this victory and a runner-up finish in a $10,100 event at the PokerGo Tour’s ARIA High Roller series in July.

Although many of the online qualifiers were amateurs and poker hobbyists, the final six players included champions with lifetime tourney earnings in the millions of dollars.

Runner-up Andrew Hulme came in with $2.2 million in earnings and his biggest lifetime cash of $345,000 for an 18th place finish in the 2023 WSOP Main Event, which he surpassed — by a lot — in Barcelona.

Marius Pertea of Romania was hoping his third final table in EPT events would be charmed, but he fizzed in third, which was still good for a career-best cash.

Rania Nasreddine, who lives in Tulsa, won her Circuit ring there last summer. She was coming off her biggest lifetime cash of $473,639 for finishing third in the EPT Monte Carlo Main Event in May. A fourth-place finish in Barcelona was worth more than a half-milly.

David Coleman joins Song as one of the world’s best high roller tournament players. The 31-year-old Las Vegas pro is a four-time PGT champ — all of which came this year. Some of his highlights include a $642,900 score for second in the 2024 Triton High Roller Series Jeju $52,000 Turbo Bounty Quattro, $455,000 for second in the $50,000 PokerGO Cup in 2021, and yet another runner-up finish in the $50,000 a Super High Roller Bowl Europe for $364,000.

Rounding out the final table was Croatia’s Boris Kuzmanovic, who just about tripled his best cash for a sixth-place finish.

Watch the final table here: