The Flying Dutchman, aka Marcel Luske, was named “Player of the Year” at the European Poker Awards in Helsinki, Finland last week.

In a pure Oscar themed event, the title was given in recognition of the success Luske had at the European poker championship sponsored by PokerStars. Luske managed to beat famous poker gurus Willie Tan, Ram Vaswani, Dave Colclough from Bet356 Poker and Lucy Rokach in Barcelona amongst six final table appearances in Europe, to win the sought-after title.

This striking tournament identified "Rookie of the Year" – this title was grabbed by Finnish Jani Sointula who won in the Monte Carlo Millions and represented Gaming Club Poker in this massive first time event.

Swede Martin De Knijff received the award for "Best Tournament Performance", having won a $2.7m in the $25,000 Bellagio WPT event. Estonian Andres Burget won the "Casino Staff Person" award for his development of poker in the Baltic States.