Even by the established standards of the European Poker Tour, we are in for a busy day here in Prague.
It is Day 1A of the EPT10 Main Event, a €5,300 buy-in tournament that has every chance of being one of the biggest ever played on the EPT. But, as remarkable as a potential 1,000+ runner tournament is, chasing Ramzi Jelassi’s crown, that is only one strand of today’s activities.
The largest-ever event on the Eureka Poker Tour today reaches its climax. Of the 1,315 players who started, only eight survive and today they will play to a winner. It’s a pretty sensational line-up, there are some enormous prizes of which the winner will take €226,400.
Nick Wright will be your host through the day on the dedicated “>Eureka Prague page.
But that is still not all. Indeed, I have saved the best until last.
After slightly more than a year learning the game, during which he has gone under cover as a golf professional, canvassed the poker-playing public for their advice, and played on his mobile across Barcelona the 13-time Grand Slam tennis champion Rafa Nadal today makes his live poker debut.
The PokerStars Sportstar will be the star attraction in a €100,000 charity poker tournament taking place in the main tournament room. Nadal will line-up alongside Ronaldo, also on the Sportstar roster, and the likes of Andriy Shevchenko, the all-time top goalscorer for the Ukraine soccer team, Alberto Tomba, the Italian great of the ski-slopes, and Daniel Negreanu, of Team PokerStars Pro.
It’s fair to say Nadal is untouchable on the tennis courts, but these first steps on to centre court, poker style, will be harder. We will spend a lot of our day today following his progress.
Here’s how you follow the action in Prague:
