“Full-to-bursting” is how I’d currently describe my laundry basket (there’s a lot of socks) but coincidentally it’s also an apt description of the poker room here in the Hilton Hotel in Prague. There’s not a table or seat spare and the “overspill” section that is situated just outside the tournament room is completely full also.
Tournament director Thomas Lamatsch has said there are over 70 alternates already and the number is steadily continuing to rise. “I believe we could get up to 1,250 players today,” declared the Austrian.
The room is certainly full of well-known players. Team PokerStars Pro is represented by Eugene Katchalov and Marcin Horecki and Team PokerStars Pro Online by Mickey Petersen but there are many, many more well-known players involved including Eureka4 Vienna winner Zoltan Gal. The Hungarian currently also leads the Eureka4 leaderboard which awards a €5,300 EPT seat to the winner, which gives Gal, along with several others an extra incentive to do well here.
Other players include Mannig Loeser, Eureka4 Vienna finalist Bryan Paris, Friend of PokerStars Pierre Neuville, former EPT5 Prague winner Salvatore Bonavena, Eoghan O’Dea, Yury Gulyy, Sofia Lovgren, David Yan and Patrick Leonard.
Meanwhile the first couple of side events have been completed (a full list of results are here):
Event#3 €200 + €20 NL – Junior’s Event – Players 21 and under only
Czech player Thanh Tung Nguyen has won the first ever EPT Juniors event for €2,361 after beating Australian Phil Ruhoff heads up. The €200 event – for players aged between 18 and 21 – kicked off at the EPT Prague Poker Festival yesterday with 46 entries. Ruhoff, now celebrating his first ever live cash, hails from Sydney and is six weeks in to an extended trip around Europe. Tournament director Sanaz Fattahi said: “It’s been a really great event. A lot of these guys have never ever played in a live event before and they were having a lot of fun.”
Event#6 €1,000 + €100 NL – Turbo
Polish player Piotr Franczak has beaten WSOP bracelet winner Valdemar Kwaysser heads-up to take down last night’s €1k NL Turbo event. It was a lifetime best cash of €18,300 for Franczak who was up against Hungary’s #5 player. Kwaysser, who first came to attention when he won LAPT San Jose in Costa Rica in 2008, has lifetime tournament winnings of more than $1.4m. In 2010 he won the IPT Sanremo main event in February and then went on to win the $10k Pot Limit Hold’em Championship at the World Series that summer. There were 63 entries in last night’s turbo event creating a €61,110 prize pool. All eight finalists made the money.
Tournament Update:
– Alvis Ledskalnins, Zymvragakis Charalambos, Hossein Ensan were among the very first players to be eliminated
– 950 players have entered today so far although the number is still climbing
– Level 2 has just finished
– Registration is open until the end of level 4
