He made one of the best folds in poker history. Then he disappeared from the game.
In 2015, Dany Parlafes pulled off one of poker’s best folds ever and banked a six-figure score. So why did he wait eight years to return to the EPT?
The last time Dany Parlafes played a European Poker Tour (EPT) Main Event on French soil, he arrived in France as a talented but unknown grinder from Romania but left as one of the most Googled and talked-about poker players in the world.
His time atop poker’s most searched list was due to his deep run at EPT Deauville in 2015–the last time Europe’s most prestigious poker tour visited France prior to EPT Paris in 2023.
It was there that Parlafes made a heads-up play so astonishing it not only left PokerStars commentators James Hartigan and Joe Stapleton floored, but the entire poker community.
But it wasn’t a bluff or a call or a Hellmuthian tantrum that gained Parlafes his notoriety.
It was the fold heard around the world. Arguably, one of the best folds ever made in tournament poker.
Here’s the hand:
Parlafes limped the button with Q♣8♦ and his opponent, Bulgaria’s Ognyan Dimov (now known to be high stakes online MTT crusher “cocojamb0”), checked with 10♥8♥.
The flop fell 9♠7♣2♠ and Dimov check-called a bet. The turn was the 6♣, giving Dimov the nut straight, but it checked through to the 5♥ river, which gave Parlafes a lesser straight. Dimov fired for two times the pot, and after a long tank, Parlafes somehow made the incredible laydown.
It wasn’t enough to win him the EPT Deauville title, unfortunately, as Parlafes ultimately finished second. Still, the runner-up finish pocketed Parlafes, then 30, a healthy €338,700. For most poker pros, a score like that would be a welcome bankroll boost as they continued to climb the stakes.
But not for Parlafes. While news of his laydown echoed around the world, Parlafes vanished from the game.
“I’ve taken a break ever since,” he tells us at EPT Paris. “I haven’t played poker at all basically.”
So what brings the now 37-year-old from Bucharest back to the EPT? What has he been doing since? And is he sick and tired of talking about that fold?
THE SOUL READ
Parlafes not only remembers what was going through his mind when he threw his cards away. He also remembers the exact moment he discovered he’d made one of poker’s best folds.
“I was playing the best poker I ever played at that very moment in time,” he tells us. “It was the biggest and most important final table of my life. Basically, my entire ten-plus year career had led me to that moment in time.”
He was heads-up against Dimov and needed to forge a comeback. There wasn’t just a huge payday for himself on the line. He could also become the first Romanian EPT champion, in what Stapleton was then referring to as ‘the year of Romania’.
“I was just extremely focused,” Parlafes remembers. “I knew the guy and I basically soul-read him. I’m not dissing [Dimov], but I felt like this had to be the moment that I make this fold.”
The cards hit the muck, the pot went to Dimov, and Parlafes lived to fight another day. At the time, he felt that the pot was small enough that he could afford to give it up, but had he called incorrectly and Dimov showed the higher straight, his stack–and chances of winning the tournament–would have been decimated.
“It was worth it for me to get bluffed off a split pot rather than for me to call and lose,” he says. “In my mind, the worst-case scenario was that he had the same hand as me. That was my thought process. He either has the same hand or he has the nuts.”
When he found later that he was correct, Parlafes admits it was a great feeling. “I don’t want to brag, but I was so sure that I’d made a good fold.”
NOTE: Parlafes’ amazing laydown was voted one of the best folds ever in the PokerStars Big 20 Awards
Proof for him that his call was the right play–even if others questioned it theoretically–came around an hour later. By that point, he had five million in chips to Dimov’s eight million, and he managed to get all of the money in the middle in a dominating position, holding ace-king versus ace-jack.
This is the last time an EPT title was won on French soil. 👇
After an eight-year absence, the EPT is back in France and the Main Event starts on Monday.
🇫🇷 Live streaming from the #EPTParis Main Event begins Feb 22nd 🇫🇷 pic.twitter.com/gLvfVQFhCI
— PokerStars (@PokerStars) February 19, 2023
“I was ahead, so I felt l was right to make the earlier fold because otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to make the comeback,” he says. “Had I doubled up there, I would have probably won because everything was on my side.
“I did everything perfectly but still it didn’t work. That’s why I’m here and I have to try again!”
“YOU ALWAYS RETURN TO YOUR FIRST LOVE”
When EPT Deauville was over, Parlafes returned home to Bucharest and weighed up his options. After more than a decade of grinding, he decided he didn’t want to play poker professionally anymore.
“I wanted to diversify my life, basically,” he says. “I went into trading, investing, crypto, stocks and all this stuff. It felt normal for me to get in there coming from poker and sports betting. It wasn’t that big of a difference.”
For the past eight years, that’s been Parlafes’ life. He barely even thought about poker, let alone played it. “But I get the itch sometimes,” he says. “You always return to your first love.”
Parlafes is playing his first EPT in years here in Paris
That itch grew increasingly intense recently, as his poker pro friends from Romania kept telling him how great live tournaments have been of late. Plus, having come so close the last time the tour was in France, it was worth him taking another shot.
“I decided to come to EPT Paris because it’s the first one in France since Deauville,” he says, hoping to repeat his good fortune in France. “I thought, c’mon, I have to do it this time. And I was already itching to play.”
Once the decision was made, Parlafes thought he might as well try to win an EPT Paris package on PokerStars. He fired up one of the very first satellites that ran, played his first hands of poker in five long years, and amazingly, qualified on his first try.
It’s been a busy but fun few days for him in Paris, as he’s been catching up with the friends who continued to chase the poker dream after he departed. “Poker was our lives,” he says. “We’re all super happy to meet up here. Hopefully, we can have fun and celebrate someone’s victory.
“I’m happy I came,” he continues. “It’s been really nice and it reminds me of why I love the game. I’ve missed it.”
The question is, how often is he asked about that incredible fold? And is he fed up with talking about it?
THERE AREN’T MANY
“It doesn’t bother me at all,” Parlafes said when asked if he was fed up with chatting about one of poker’s best folds. “I was just talking about it this morning!
“When you dream about becoming recognisable in some way in poker, you never imagine that it will be because of a fold,” he says, chuckling. “You think it will be for winning a big tournament, a huge pot, or maybe a big call. But you never think you’re going to make a huge fold and everyone is going to ask you about it for years. For a while, I was like, what? No!”
But Parlafes now looks upon his accomplishment with pride. “At the end of the day, there are millions of great calls,” he says. “There are millions of huge pots in these TV cash games. But there aren’t that many big folds, so it makes sense. I’m happy I’m on this side of such a big hand.”
Parlafes on Day 1B of the EPT Paris Main Event
If there’s one issue Parlafes has with discussions about the hand, it’s that not enough people consider what would have happened if he’d been wrong.
“What if it was a terrible fold because he had a king-high bluff?” he says. “Imagine being in that position. Of course, I would never win an EPT if I’m folding a straight there.
“I’m so happy it’s considered one of the best folds publicly and the only thing that people can say is congratulations, that was a great soul read.
“Because otherwise, I would be the idiot who folded the straight.”
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