France’s Hugo Girard has claimed victory in the WPT Prime Paris Championship for a €170,000 (US$183,294) career-best score.
The event saw 1,242 entries battle through five Day 1 starting flights at the plush Club Circus Paris, all fighting for a slice of the €1,192,320 (US $1,285,559) prize pool that would be paid out to the top 156 finishers.
Action Recap
As the event moved towards the sharp end, the first hands of note were at the expense of Conor O’Driscoll.
The Irishman opened to 115,000 from the button with A♣ 7♥ and got three-bet by Kostya Zaks to 900,000 in the big blind, holding K♦ J♦
O’Driscoll didn’t think long before jamming in the remaining 60,000 that Zaks had left behind and then the Frenchman obliged by shrugging and calling it off for his tournament life.
The flop came down A♥ 6♥ 3♦ which pretty much sealed the deal for O’Driscoll, but then fate took a bad turn as 10♦ and Q♦ rolled off onto the board to give Zaks a flush and the winning hand.
Only minutes later, lightning struck twice in the same place, and it was Kostya Zaks again.
O’Driscoll squeezes Zaks with K♣ K♥ and then calls it off when he faces a jam. Easy enough but then we see that the Frenchman has A♣ A♥
The flop is a nasty-looking K♦ J♥ 10♥ and the 4♠ turn changes nothing.
But the river is the A♦, flipping the script and sending Conor O’Driscoll home after a torrid few minutes of poker.
When the final table formed up, it would take a lengthy 124 hands before the final two players would square off against each other.
The heads-up match ended up being about the same length before Hugo Girard could finish off his compatriot Mathieu Goncalves.
The final hand was Goncalves jamming K♠ 9♦ and Girard calling to put his opponent at risk of elimination.
The board came out 7♠ 7♦ 4♠ 5♦ 4♥ with Goncalves drawing dead on the river.
Girard had maintained his lead from the start of the day until he had only one opponent left.
Goncalves did well to fight his way back into contention multiple times but in the end, a timely double-up for Girard set him up for the finish.
As well as a career best prize, Girard also received an entry ticket to the WPT World Championship.
€1,100 WPT Prime Paris Championship Final Table Results
| Place | Player | Country | Prize |
| 1 | Hugo Girard | France | €170,000 |
| 2 | Mathieu Goncalves | France | €117,120 |
| 3 | Kostya Zaks | France | €85,200 |
| 4 | Baptiste Audoli | France | €63,700 |
| 5 | Etienne Silva de Oliveira | France | €48,700 |
| 6 | Oleksii Ievchenko | Ukraine | €38,100 |
| 7 | Ludovic Amblard | France | €30,400 |
| 8 | Samuel Fournier | France | €24,500 |
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