EPT Prague: Big tournaments, big winners as festival in full flow
A look through the side events at EPT Prague
The EPT Main Event starts today, but as always it is far from the only tournament taking place at the Hilton Prague this week. Anybody arriving just to play (or report on) the Main Event has already missed an absolute hatful of other tournaments, with plenty more to come on a 70-event schedule.
Let’s take a quick look at the poker tournaments that are already in the books.
By far the biggest tournament, at least in terms of entries, is the PokerStars Open, which occupies its familiar billing as Event #1. This time it had a buy-in of €1,650, a slight increase on previous iterations, but one that has barely affected player numbers.
In all, there were 3,024 entries to this one, including 1,613 re-entries, promising €583,000 to the winner. They play down to that champion today, with 12 left overnight.
The PokerStars Open Cup is now an €825 buy-in tournament, and again it attracted players in their droves. When four players were left from a starting field of 2,140 entries, the weary battlers agreed to an ICM deal.
Finland’s Kai Lehto was leading at the time and locked up the most, securing himself €162,000. (The original first place prize was €230,000.) The other dealers were Paul Grummitt, of the UK, who finished second for €145,000; Switzerland’s Salvatore Falco, who earned €136,000 for third; and Jean-Baptiste Pano of France, whose fourth place also banked him six figures. He won €112,500.
Turning an €825 buy-in into that kind of money is what the EPT is all about.
TOURNAMENT BUY-INS AT ALL LEVELS
Enrico Camosci continues his hot streak
At the higher end of the buy-in scale, Italy’s Enrico Camosci added to his growing list of poker titles with victory in the €20,000 NLHE tournament. This was a snug affair with eight entries, but Camosci proved his mettle once again, downing Estonia’s Ottomar Ladva heads up to win €85,690.
Camosci has rapidly become one of poker’s breakout stars through the past couple of years, and this was far from his biggest success. But when he’s still in contention for the high designation of the PokerStars Live League, everything is even more significant than usual.
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Camosci also came third in the €10,200 Mystery Bounty earlier in the week, from which he won €36,900. The champion there was Bulgaria’s Yulian Bogdanov, whose total payout of €147,000 including €90,000 in bounty payments. He played well and drew well when the envelopes came out.
Yulian Bogdanov drew well in the Mystery Bounty
HUGE CHOICE IN DECEMBER
Poker players obviously have an enormous amount of choice of tournaments to play during December, and the EPT is delighted that so many have opted to head to Prague. It’s especially gratifying when tournaments such as the €330 Women’s Event attracts a field of 116 entries, an increase year-on-year with the 2024 renewal.
Marina Mendy went one better than Barcelona
Marina Mendy of France went one better than her runner-up finish in the same event in Barcelona when she took down this tournament in Prague this week, earning €8,568. Mendy was narrowly beaten by Shiina Okamoto in Barcelona, so this must have felt especially sweet. She is now closing in on $100,000 in documented poker tournament winnings, which is a spectacular return from playing mainly low stakes events.
NORDICS DOING NORDIC THINGS
There was an all-Norway heads-up duel in the €10,200 PLO Six-Max event, where the Nordics lived up to their billing as the players to beat in the four-card game. Joachim Haraldstad ended up beating countryman Espen Myrmo heads-up in that one, landing the €154,400 first prize.
Haraldstad first won a side event on the EPT back in 2013 and has since been to an EPT Main Event final table as he’s earned more than $1.3 million in documented tournament earnings. Myrmo is even more established and previously won the EPT Barcelona €25K PLO event in August for more than €400K. Haraldstad got the better of the PLO whiz in this one however.
There’s plenty more going on across the board in Prague this week. We’ll have regular side event reports as they play out.
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