19-year-old Spaniard is WSOPE Main Event champion

Adrian Mateos is the second youngest poker player to win the event

A relatively unknown youngster from Spain will have an entire year of fame and bragging rights after conquering the main event of the 2013 World Series of Poker Europe (WSOPE) at Casino Barriere d'Enghien-les-Bainswith near Paris, France.

The WSOPE ended this weekend with Adrian Mateos winning the No Limit Hold ‘Em Main Event title, the €1,000,000 (£857,134) cash prize, and the highly-coveted WSOPE gold bracelet. He joins fellow bracelet winner, Canadian Daniel Negreaunu, who previously won the WSOPE High Roller title before being proclaimed as the 2013 World Series of Poker (WSOP) Player of the Year.

Mateos’ victory didn’t come easy, however. He had to get past world poker champions Dominik Nitsche and Benny Spindler before reaching the finals. In the final table, Mateos found a match with the Main Event runner-up, Fabrice Soulier of France, who seized a home court advantage and took a huge lead over Mateos before the latter regained the driver’s seat and eventually topped the field of 375 poker players after a total of 164 hands.

“I'm so tilted at the moment. I don't like how I played a couple of hands, but I changed the plan and tried to play smaller pots and that worked,” an ecstatic Mateos said to the press after his win.

With his successful WSOPE campaign, Mateos becomes the second youngest bracelet winner in WSOPE’s history. According to the Bet Fair website, only Norway’s Anne Obrestad was younger when she won her bracelet at the first-ever WSOPE Main Event held in 2007. Mateos also joins Carlos Mortensen as the second WSOPE bracelet winner from Spain.

“(With more money), I can play more events,” Mateos said. At age 19, however, he has to wait for two more years before he can participate in the main WSOP tournament in Las Vegas, USA. “You will see me more. Next year I can’t (go to Las Vegas), I have to wait, but I will be there,” Mateos nevertheless promised.

The final WSOP bracelet for this year will be awarded next week at the WSOP Main Event in Las Vegas.

Here are the final table results of the 2013 WSOPE Main Event:

1. Adrian Mateos (Spain) – €1,000,000 (£857,134)

2. Fabrice Soulier (France) – €610,000 (£522,851)

3. Dominik Nitsche (Germany) – €400,000 (£342,853)

4. Jerome Huge (France) – €251,000 (£215,140)

5. Ravi Raghavan (USA) – €176,000 (£150,855)

6. Benny Spindler (Germany) – €126,000 (£107,998)

7. Andrei Konopelko (Belarus) – €101,000 (£86,570)

8. Shannon Shorr (USA) – €77,500 (£66,427)