Thursday, 28th March 2024 13:56
Home / Uncategorized / Urban dwells at top of Eureka Poker Tour Day 1A field
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An historic old city, a brand new poker tour, the Eureka Poker Tour to be exact and they’ll be no geographical pigeon holing for PokerStars latest tour. The first stop is the Casino card club in Prague and despite sharing the same initials this is not the EPT and the Casino card club is not the Hilton. But that’s part of its charm, smaller venue and smaller buy-in for sure, smaller heart and soul, not likely. Throughout the day cries of anguish proceeded cries of ‘seat open’. For many of the players this is their first big live event and they know it could be their last.

At the end of nine one hour levels 50 of the 160 entrants remained and leading the way is Jaroslav Urban from the Czech Republic. He had a storming last two levels to bag up a total of 114,000, he told us he got his stack through: “Good cards and aggressive play,” like the Czech Republic and beer that’s a pretty potent combination.

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Jaroslav Urban – chip leader

It looked for much of the day like the chip leader would be fellow Czech, Oldrich Siml, he won the PokerStars Prague Open in September 2010 in this very casino, in fact he was wearing the same top today as when he won back in September. He had a slice of luck, winning a 55,000 pot to stay in the tournament when he spiked a third ten to crack pocket kings during level six. He never looked back and backed up 102,100, good for third spot overnight.

The only other player to break into six figures was Kamil Koska (104,900) a Polish PokerStars qualifier, rounding out the top five are fellow PokerStars qualifier Lucian Mod-Iuhasz Ovidiu (98,500) and Chuc Viorel Ion Burlan (97,800).

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Long time chip leader Oldrich Siml

The only Team PokerStars Pro in action today was Martin Hruby and it was a short day for him. He started steadily enough and found a great spot to double up, getting it in with pocket kings against Jan Petermann’s pocket queens. Unfortunately Pettermann’s hand connected rather better with the queen high board than Hruby’s did and that was that. That was three and a half hours in, cheers thanks for coming, see you next year.

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Hruby’s kings failed to hold up

Amongst those bubbling under with above average stacks, ready to make their move on day two are Ondrej Vinklarek – who I’ve dubbed the Czech Chris Moorman as he’s reputedly one of this countries best online tournament players and Michal Maryska a man who’s won three festival events in this casino. Amongst the 110 players who won’t be coming back to play day two is Pavel Hudecek he finished runner-up to Siml here in September.

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Ondrej Vinklarek – coming back to Day 2 with a good stack

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

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Prague – stunning

PokerStars Blog reporting team at Eureka Poker Tour Prague:Nick Wright. Photos courtesy of Tomas Stacha.

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