Seat 3: Mario Nagel, 29, Gelsenkirchen, Germany – PokerStars player 1,210,000
Campione must bring back pretty good memories for German PokerStars player Mario Nagel because it’s here that he snagged his first ever live cash when he finished 27th at the Italian Poker Tour Campione event last June for $5,126. Just a few months later and he had another cash in Italy – third in one of the EPT San Remo nightly €300 turbo tourneys for €4,500. Online he’s done even better and won a $265 SCOOP event last year for $81,536. Nagel, who is an Industrial Administrator and is also studying economics, first started playing poker after he saw Chris Moneymaker winning the WSOP on TV in 2004. Initially he stuck to playing online tourneys on PokerStars but after his SCOOP victory, he started playing live events as well. EPT Barcelona was his first EPT and this is his first EPT main event cash. Nagel is being supported in Campione by his good friends Ole Schemoin, Tobias Hagedorn and EPT Prague champion Martin Finger.