Six of the best: Picking the stars among the last 45 in the EPT Prague Main Event
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One of the most appealing aspects of the European Poker Tour (EPT) is the way that each event introduces poker fans to a whole host of new faces. So often, the deep stages of the Main Event feature players who haven’t yet made a major splash on the live poker scene, but the EPT offers them the perfect platform.
The Main Event here in Prague is no exception. There are not many household names among the last 45 players from this 1,224-entry field.
For all that, there are definitely more than just a few players who have been here before, done that and earned enough to buy many of the T-shirts. Here’s a quick look at six of the best, still hunting the title in Prague as the tournament enters Day 4.
JEFF SARWER
A welcome return for Jeff Sarwer
No player in the field has a more interesting personal biography than Canada’s Jeff Sarwer. As a child, he was a chess prodigy and something of a superstar in his native Toronto, taking on numerous adults in specially-arranged showcase chess showdowns. He was a pint-sized phenom and an irresistible presence in news reports on TV and in print, tipped to be better than Bobby Fischer.
He withdrew, and from the public eye entirely, without ever going on to fulfil his enormous potential — for reasons that Sarwer has previously opened up about in news stories published after his re-emergence as a poker player around 2009. He made two EPT Main Event final tables in quick succession, with every indication that he was destined for the very top in another strategic pursuit.
These days, Sarwer is more of an occasional live poker player, though he is also known to dabble online. But he remains razor sharp, with sensational skills for game theory and people-reading.
His deep run in Prague should surprise nobody.
LEO WORTHINGTON-LEESE
No surprise to see Leo Worthington-Leese again
Plenty of players could claim to be “due” an EPT Main Event success, and plenty of those claims would be valid. But Leo Worthington-Leese has arguably one of the most convincing cases.
Having built his reputation in small buy-in tournaments in the UK and Slovakia, among other places, he has subsequently made the top 20 in EPT Main Events on three previous occasions. That includes a third-place finish in Monte Carlo in 2023.
Since then, Worthington-Leese has come out on top of the massive Eureka Cyprus Main Event for more than $300,000, and has continued his prolific cashing across the globe since then. He is a natural on the biggest stage, and a massive breakthrough is surely imminent.
MARIA LAMPROPULOS
Maria Lampropulos: The PCA champion back in the mix
With close to $4 million in documented live cashes, Maria Lampropulos is one of the most successful players remaining in the EPT Prague Main Event. And she is very well known and respected at PokerStars-sponsored events.
In January 2018, Lampropulos took a seat alongside Adrian Mateos, Koray Aldemir and Shaun Buchanan, among others, at the final table of the PCA Main Event. None of those three men have a PCA title among their many poker accolades.
That’s because Lampropulos does.
The Argentinian pro blazed through that final table, becoming the only woman to win the PCA Main Event through its 15 year history. But don’t be thinking it was a one off. The $1.1 million prize isn’t even her biggest live tournament score.
Lampropulos is a proper superstar, and it’s great to see her back on the EPT, hitting the late stages once again.
CONOR O’DRISCOLL
Conor O’Driscoll: Star of stage and stream
Team PokerStars Ambassador Ben “Spraggy” Spragg, who has been streaming the EPT Prague action on his own YouTube and Twitch page, has been paying special attention to Ireland’s Connor O’Driscoll. Spraggy knows him well.
Not only is O’Driscoll a popular member of the UKIPT-playing community (Spraggy’s home from home), and a Twitch streamer himself, the pair actually sat alongside one another at a WCOOP final table last year. That was one of two final tables O’Driscoll made on the same night—and an evening on which he secured his maiden WCOOP title.
Playing as “ccOOnnOOrr”, O’Driscoll beat a field of 6,217 entries to win a $22 buy-in event. The WCOOP and UKIPT streets are a perfect training ground for the EPT, and here is O’Driscoll’s big chance to make the practice pay off handsomely.
TOBIAS PETERS
Tobias Peters back in a happy hunting ground
The Dutchman Tobias Peters enjoys his trips to the Czech Republic. In recent years, he has won two World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelets in Rozvadov, and also owns a WSOP Circuit ring, which he picked up in his native Netherlands.
Like Worthington-Leese, Peters has been knocking on the door at the EPT for years, and the sheer length of his results list points to a player of incredible longevity. Peters has more than $4 million in documented tournament winnings, but remarkably only six six-figure scores. He has instead been recording literally dozens of four- and five-figure results every year for the best part of two decades.
And in Prague, here he is again.
FAHREDIN MUSTAFOV
Fahredin Mustafov: High Roller
If you’ve got the guts, bankroll and skills, there’s a lot of money to be played for in the world of tournament poker these days. And Fahredin Mustafov has definitely got what it takes, recently becoming a regular on the nosebleed poker tours around the world. It means he habitually sits down to play events with buy-ins more than most people’s mortgages–and winning enough to pay most of them off.
The EPT Main Event presents its own challenges, however, and the Bulgarian seems well equipped to deal with them. A healthy chunk of his more than $10 million in live tournament winnings have come from tournaments with buy-ins of around the €5K mark, and two of his earliest outright tournament wins came in EPT side events here in Prague.
He is far from just a whale who hops directly into the Super High Rollers. Rather, his earliest results date from 2010 and 2011, when he was playing small buy-in tournaments in his native Bulgaria. He is also a member of a very select club, namely players who have cashed in an EPT Main Event in Greece. Mustafov finished 19th in the one and only EPT Loutraki.
*****
The players listed above are far from the only ones who have what it takes to go all the way in this EPT Prague Main Event. Both chip-leader Gianfranco Iaculli and seventh-placed Paawan Bansal have what long-time EPT followers might describe as a perfect resume for taking down a Main Event, for example.
Iaculli has four EPT Main Event cashes before this one, all from the past two years. Likewise Bansal has three Main Event in-the-money finishes alongside a heap of deep runs in big-field WSOP events. When “new” players tend to break through and take down an EPT title, that’s precisely the kind of previous results they tend to have.
Meanwhile Lithuania’s Marius Kudzmanas, though relatively short-stacked overnight, is another with an excellent pedigree. He has two WSOP Online bracelets and numerous EPT cashes. His time is similarly long overdue.
In short, strap in for another intriguing few days of EPT poker. There’s a lot of talent here vying for that $1m+ first prize.
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