Huge repeat winners in Prague as cream rises to top
The European Poker Tour (EPT) Main Event is now well under way, but as we all know, it’s not the only race at this two-week long festival. Fifteen tournaments are over already, with 15 players having already secured six-figure prizes. Let’s take a look around the festival so far to see what’s been happening, and note how repeat winners seem to be the current trend.
ADAMSZKI COMES OF AGE AS HIGH ROLLER ELITE
Tamas Adamszki‘s tournament poker career is a little over a decade old, but it’s only in recent years that he’s really taken a step up to become a regular fixture in the deep stages of Europe’s major live tournaments.
Here in Prague, he has elevated his status a notch further.
On Monday, Adamszki landed a hugely significant title with victory in the €50K buy-in Super High Roller, earning a career-best €394,670 after a heads-up deal with his Hungarian compatriot Laszlo Bujtas.
That victory came only a couple of days after Adamszki won the €5,200 Mystery Bounty event, for €117,150. That’s one “small” Spadie trophy followed quickly by one of the large ones. This represents a major turning point in Adamszki’s career.
Two trophies for Tamas Adamszki
With the various scheduling clashes on December’s poker calendar, tournament organisers here knew that the larger buy-in events would likely have a smaller field than usual. However, there were still 23 entries to the Super High Roller, including seven re-entries, and a prize pool of more than $1.1 million.
SMALL BUT TOUGH
With Adamszki and Bujtas lining up alongside Teun Mulder and Tsugunari Toma in the final four in this event, it could hardly be called soft either. And that’s after the likes of Juan Pardo, Steve O’Dwyer, Ole Schemion and Kayhan Mokri had already departed. So the Hungarian duo did exceptionally well to become the last two surviving.
After Adamszki knocked out Mulder in third, Bujtas had a slight chip lead before heads-up play. They agreed a deal that left a decisive €40K on the side for the winner. Adamszki quickly moved into a lead and never yielded it, continuing his momentum from earlier in the week.
In that previous €10K event, he beat Michel Molenaar heads up, having also outlasted a final table featuring Niklas Astedt and Pablo Brito, among others.
EUREKA BREAKS RECORDS (AGAIN) AND SENDS HALF A MILLION TO TKATSCHEW
The €1,000 Eureka Main Event in Prague continues to go from strength to strength. Having broken its own record for entries this time last year, it crushed the figure once again this time with 4,403 entries across four opening flights.
That put more than €4.2 million in the prize pool and paid 659 places. The eventual winner, Germany’s Alexander Tkatschew, banked €511,710.
That’s right, Tkatschew turned a €1,100 buy-in into more than half a million euros.
Alexander Tkatschew
He too is riding a wave of success on the EPT having landed a $25K single-day tournament in Cyprus. That victory in came with a $432,090 prize, so he’s closing in on a million through the past two EPT festivals.
Victory here came after a heads-up duel with Poland’s Remi Wyrzykiewicz. Wyrzykiewicz is best known for his final table in Malta in 2015. Wyrzykiewicz’s second place in this whopper earned a career-best €306,790.
A whole clutch of players cashed in this event having won their ticket via a PokerStars online satellite. Congratulations to:
Simon Higgins, Andrej Tekel, Daniel Peche, Karl-Heinz Metz, Piotr Wiecek, Candido Cappiello, Magnus Persson, Mathias Bayer, Martijn Kiers, Aliaksandr Kliashtorny, Danut Chisu, Mircea Flutur, Bartlomiej Basiaga, Sebastian Szychulski, Marcin Witek, Alejandro Vazquez, Michal Zubek, Daniel Lopez Ruiz, Marius Irimia, Pieter Theelen, Milos Ostojic, Jason Wheeler, Nikolaos Ktenas, Donato De Bonis, Daniel Koloszar, Matias Arosuo, Dominik Hemetsberger, Miha Travnik, Luigi D’Alterio, Clara Rodigari, Matthew Nelson, Patrick Weifels, Juho Suutari, Valentin Oberhauser, Manuel Valduga, Airidas Stazys, Miika Toyras, Ivan Zhechev, Martin Kradlak, Guillermo Gordo, Eriks Krumins, Antonio Rodriguez Jimenez, Damian Rapanowicz and Aurelijus Sipavicius
for having taken this money-saving route.
PokerStars Ambassadors Ramon Colillas, Alejandro Lococo and Felix Schneiders also all cashed.
ONLINE GIANTS LAND LIVE SPOILS
The aforementioned Ole Schemion and Niklas Astedt are also both now clutching EPT Prague trophies too. They triumphed in €25K and €10K buy-in events, respectively.
Astedt only had to overcome a field of three players in the €10K Hyper Turbo, but a win’s a win. He took €14,100, plus bounties. Meanwhile Schemion bettered a field of 27 entries in the first €25K single-day event and banked €246,370.
Mulder was again in the top three in that one, picking up €105,300, with Switzerland’s Diego Zeiter finishing second.
Ole Schemion
CHECK OUT FULL TOURNAMENT RESULTS FROM EPT/EUREKA PRAGUE
