Today a total of 169 players joined the 150 players from Day 1A to create a field of 319 for the inaugural PokerStars Eureka Poker Tour event. Whilst that number was important it was nothing compared to the figure announced midway through the day, €58,400 was the important figure. It’s what the winner of this event will pocket. The top six places will make five figures and anyone cashing is guaranteed €1,280. If you’d like to see the entire payout structure click here.
A total of 48 players from today made it through, they’ll join the 50 survivors from Day 1A and combine under one roof tomorrow, where play will be eight handed from the start.
Tonight the man with statistically the greatest chance of taking home the first prize is Marius Tripsa from Romania. He bagged up a total of 127,000 to end the day as chip leader, he took his time to get to the top though.
On the penultimate hand of the day he got involved in a huge pot holding two black aces against Alexey Neofitov’s J♥ 8♣ . All the money flew in on the 10♣ 2â™ 9♦ flop, and Tripsa’s 65% shot held up to propel him to the chip lead. Others loved and lost the chip lead during todays nine levels, but those who’ll be happy with their day’s work include Cristian Murgoci (107,100), Jakub Ratulowski (98,600) and Martin Strban (98,400).
Team PokerStars pro Dag Palovic was in action today. He got up to 29,500 at one point but couldn’t kick on and although he hung around to level eight, he never really got going and ran Aâ™ 5â™ into Martin Strban’s pocket queens.
It was much the same tale for Team PokerStars Online player Grzegorz Mikielewicz apart from the ending that is. At about the same time as Palovic was eliminated he went on a tear to end the day on 86,100. As he told me: “At 300-600 I was down to 4,000. I then doubled up twice and won another hand to get to 25,000. I then moved tables and on the first hand I doubled up with [A][Q] against [9][8] of Tadeas Kozdon. Then on the last hand I eliminated him with A♦ 4♦ against [6][2] which was a 80,000 pot.”
Today saw the British invade Prague with a number of well known faces making the trip. Whilst some such as EPT Budapest winner Will Fry and three-time UKIPT finalist Mike Hill perished along the way, others will have to put off tasting the Prague nightlife for another day at least.
One of those is James Keys (69,000) who recently finished second in the Aussie Millions for a million dollars, he wasn’t even meant to be playing today, but once he realised he could still play EPT Snowfest and this event he was soon persuaded. For much of the day he was at the same table as Keith (52,100) and Mitch Johnson (67,300) all three know each other from the UK circuit and it led another Brit to call it the ‘Dusk Till Dawn’ table.
To catch up with all today’s action click on the links below:
Levels 1 & 2
Levels 3 & 4
Levels 5 & 6
Levels 7, 8 & 9
We’re off into the Prague night, join us again from 2pm tomorrow.
PokerStars Blog reporting team at Eureka Poker Tour Prague: Nick Wright. Photos courtesy of Tomas Stacha.
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