Qualifier Andrei Teodorescu’s year of learning ends with $161K score in Cyprus
Romania's Andrei Teodorescu has had a Cyprus trip to remember. He qualified online for just $16.50 and is now heading home with $161,800...
Around a year ago, Andrei Teodorescu – an architect and construction company owner from Bucharest, Romania – came to a decision:
He decided he wanted to learn how to play live poker tournaments.
That might not seem like the most shocking or groundbreaking revelation to those of you reading, but for Teodorescu, it felt big.
He’d only played home games and some small cash games up to that point, but would often see his friends jet-setting around the world to play big events. So he reached out to a few of them, asked if he could pick their brains, and began his journey.
That journey hit a major milestone here in Cyprus.
Teodorescu battled his way through an enormous field of 2,569 entries to finish third in the $1,100 buy-in EUREKA Main Event for $161,800 – only his second live cash (his first was for $164).
Teodorescu won a package for the event for just $16.50
What makes it even better is that Andrei Teodorescu won a full package to the event on PokerStars for just $16.50. He then busted that first bullet but won another in a $250 live satellite and, needless to say, that attempt went much better.
“The packages you win are great,” says Teodorescu, and he should know. He qualified for Monte Carlo earlier this year and enjoyed the experience so much that he did the same for the EUREKA Main Event in Cyprus.
“It’s like a mini-holiday,” he adds. “I can bring my family and we all stay together, it’s a nice atmosphere.”
MORAL SUPPORT
Tudor Costache – a fellow Romanian and one of the friends Andrei Teodorescu learned tournaments from – was on the rail cheering him on throughout today’s final table. “He was nervous this morning,” Costache told us as he watched from the sidelines. “He doesn’t have the live experience that the others have.”
But Costache proved to be the ideal support team as he had once been in a very similar position. Back in July 2022, he reached the final table of EUREKA Bucharest, finishing in ninth place.
Despite his lack of live tournament experience, Teodorescu showed some chops in the live-read department. For example, after some consideration, he correctly folded A♥ Q♥ to a pre-flop jam, and his opponent then showed pocket aces.
He also worked the short stack to perfection. “I had a few points where I was very lucky,” he says. “The timing was good for my cards.”
STUFF DREAMS ARE MADE OF
But you don’t reach the final table of such a huge event with luck alone. Looking back on it all, he feels like he had a smooth ride to the final. He describes his run as “perfect, like a dream.”
In fact, this entire trip has felt like a dream for Andrei Teodorescu.
“It was great,” he says. “This is an experience that anyone who has ever played poker should try to live at least once.
“Everything is perfect: the organisation, the PokerStars team… I have only good words about everything that happened here.”
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