Dario Sammartino, Italy (1,300,000)
Italian Dario Sammartino is making an early case for breakout player of the year, and his success started at the last European Poker Tour stop in Malta.
It was there that Sammartino played in the Global Poker Masters event as part of Team Italy. As a part of the team, Sammartino and the others took the title and the success has been rolling in ever since.
Sammartino started his Monaco festival by winning a satellite into the €100,000 Super High Roller — by far the largest poker event of his career. He not only played the biggest event of his young career, but he went on to earn his largest score after making the final table and finishing fourth for €709,500. Sammartino followed that impressive result up by taking to action in the 564-player EPT Grand Final €10,600 Main Event. A few days after starting, Sammartino finished in 17th place for €51,350.
Now that he's in the money with the third largest stack of 1.3 million in the €25,500 High Roller, Sammartino is on the biggest rush of his life.
Before these results, Sammartino boasted a poker résumé with just shy of $1.3 million in live tournament earnings. He's now up to over $2.1 million in live tournament earnings, not including the €86,800 he's already locked up here.