The United Kingdom’s Liv Boeree, a model, TV presenter and regular on the poker circuit, proved herself more than just one of poker’s “babes” today, by skillfully taking down the PokerStars European Poker Tour San Remo main event- the largest EPT ever held in Europe.

Boeree, who previously had never cashed for more than $42,000, for this victory will take home a top prize worth an incredible €1,250,000 (over $1,670,000 USD) as well as the EPT title and trophy; prizes hard won after entering the final table with more than a 10 million chip deficit when compared to the Day 5 chip leader, Jakob Carlsson, whose monstrous stack left many to believe this final table was basically over before it began.

Carlsson’s mountain of tournament chips, worth over 13.5 million when the final table began, served him well for much of the last day of play, only increasing in size and worth, as his fellow players quickly dropped to the side lines.  This unwieldy stack was reported to be at almost 16 million by the time there were only 6 people left in the field, and grew to around 25 million once play had reached three-handed, however it was at that point that the mountain finally began to subside, as his rivals Liv and Toni Pettersson, started growing mountains of their own. 

Before three-handed play, a gambler would have been hard pressed to find anyone willing to make an even money bet against Carlsson, but by the time Pettersson hit the rail in third place for €420,000, all that had changed and remarkably it was Boeree who entered the final tournament phase as the chip leader when heads-up play began. 

Carlsson, clearly a skilled tournament player in his own right, by no means gave up at that point and was even able to wrestle back the lead after a short amount of time, but unfortunately for the young Swede, Liv seemed entirely unwilling to get this close and not finish the job.  It was a strong effort, but soon Carlsson's entire formally huge pile of chips was in front of the lovely Boeree, and he was reluctantly accepting his €750,000 runner-up check.

The final table finish positions for the 2010 PokerStars EPT San Remo main event were as follows:

1st.  Liv Boeree- €1,250,000

2nd.  Jakob Carlsson- €750,000

3rd.  Toni Pettersson- €420,000

4th.  Michael Piper- €345,000

5th.  Alexey Rybin- €270,000

6th.  Giuseppe Diep- €210,000

7th.  Claudio Piceci- €150,000

8th.  Atanas Gueorguiev- €90,000

For more information on this or other major European Poker Tour events, visit www.europeanpokertour.com, or check out the PokerStars blog.