Seat 6: Barny Boatman, 68, United Kingdom (9,675,000)
For several decades, Barny Boatman has been among the best known and most respected British poker players and now, aged 68, he comes to the EPT Paris final table with the chance to become the tour's oldest champion.
Boatman has been playing on the EPT since its very first stop, and was a prominent pro player even before then as a founding member of The Hendon Mob. Despite humbly claiming to be not even the best poker player in his own house – a reference to his brother Ross – Barny is nonetheless the only Hendon Mobster still playing regularly at the top level.
He has two WSOP bracelets, won in 2013 and 2015, and more than $4 million in documented tournament cashes. But he has also earned his stripes as a commentator, writer and poker ambassador; alongside brother Ross, Joe Beevers and Ram Vaswani, the Hendon Mob were
some of the first poker players ever to land sponsorship deals from an online operator. Of course, they also lent their collective name to what is now the leading database for live poker tournament results.
Here in Paris, Boatman vaulted to the chip lead at the end of Day 4 when he picked off an enormous bluff from Eric Afriat. Boatman called for all his chips with a pair of jacks and a low kicker, later quipping: "It's my tournament life, not my actual life. There's always another tournament."
He steered his big stack through Day 5 and returns to an EPT Main Event final table for the first time since October 2011, when he finished fourth for €225,000. No one in the Boatman household has an EPT title (Ross finished sixth in Monte Carlo in 2006). But there would be few more popular champions if Barny can finish the job on Sunday.