An update from the PokerStars European Poker Tour Prague including high rollers victories for Thomas Boivin, Corentin Ropert and Alexander Norden.
I would love to tell you a tale or two about my times in Prague, but I haven’t had a drink for nine years, and so I doubt anything I say will pull your eyeballs away from the stick of celery that’s about to go under the knife.
Just know this.
It’s cold in December, so the best place to be is inside a casino with a deck of cards, and a few familiar faces to keep your heart stoked.
Here are a few people who took that piece of advice before it even left the sanitarium of my mind.
Thomas Boivin Wins €25,000 Single-Day High Roller I
The first €25,000 Single-Day High Roller has gone the way of bubonic plague, and Thomas Boivin defeated a field of 46-entrants (36 unique, ten rich people) to bank the €375,520 first prize – a personal best for the Belgian. Talking about personal bests, five of the six players who made the final table have won more money in 2018 than at any other time in their lives.
Steve O’Dwyer has earned $6.4m and came into this one as one of the few players in the world who could still pinch the 2018 Global Poker Index (GPI) Player of the Year award from under the nose of Alex Foxen.
Orpen Kisacikoglu competes in all of these big buy-in events, and this was his tenth final table of the year, earning a record $1.8m in the process. I get the feeling the man from Turkey will be unstoppable once he reaches the summit of these things, but so far seems to be stuck on third base.
Michael Addamo won the €25k High Roller at the World Series of Poker Europe (WSOPE) for €848,702, and that helped create a record annual haul of $2.7m, and what on earth has Pavel Plesuv been eating? The Moldovan came into this event on the back of winning his first World Poker Tour (WPT) title and has now made the final table of all three of the Prague high rollers. His $3m in live tournament earnings is also a record.
That leaves Stefan Huber, the founder of Raising for Effective Giving (REG), who is always a beautiful sight to behold at a final table because you know his mere presence means somewhere in the world a life or two has been saved.
Boivin, who found his way into this event via a live satellite, beat O’Dwyer, heads-up, and that’s no mean feat these days. It’s the third tournament win of his career. Boivin mastered the controls of a 2,887-entrant $1,100 Mid-States Poker Tour (MSPT) DeepStack event at The Venetian for $352,153 in the summer of 2016. Then last year, he conquered a 516-entrant AUD 1,200 No-Limit Hold’em Six-Max event at the Aussie Millions for $88,195.
The win takes Boivin’s all-time live tournament dollar count to $2,123,725, and it’s the fourth successive year that Boivin has seen his annual haul increase.
Here are the final table results:
Final Table Results
1. Thomas Boivin – €375,520
2. Steve O’Dwyer – €259,550
3. Orpen Kisacikoglu – €165,670
4. Michael Addamo – €127,010
5. Pavel Plesuv – €99,400
6. Stefan Huber – €77,310
Corentin Ropert Wins The €25k Single-Day High Roller II.
If you’ve never heard the name Corentin Ropert before, it’s because a €25k buy-in event is not his usual fodder.
Ropert told the press after his win that he was going to spend the night in his hotel room watching movies until buoyed by Boivin’s satellite success, he decided to give it a whirl.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Ropert defeated Japan’s Tsugunari Toma, heads-up, to win the €277,560 first prize, an amount that topped five years of combined Hendon Mob results in one fell swoop.
A special hat tip should go to Michael Addamo and Pavel Plesuv for making back-to-back €25k events.
The event pulled in 34-entrants (29 unique, 5 re-entries).
Here are the final table results:
Final Table Results
1. Corentin Ropert – €277,560
2. Tsugunari Toma – €191,840
3. Michael Addamo – €122,450
4. Dietrich Fast – €93,880
5. Norbert Szecsi – €73,470
6. Pavel Plesuv – €57,140
Alex Norden Wins The €10,300 Pot-Limit Omaha
The fact that the players agreed to alter the blind structure to squeeze this event into 12-hours shows that the organisers expected more than 26-entrants.
The winner was Alex Norden, who picked up the third title of a live tournament career that shows me that the Swede prefers earning his wage at the cash game tables or online.
Norden beat Niko Soininen, heads-up, to take down the biggest Pot-Limit Omaha (PLO) buy-in at EPT Prague. The former November Niner, Jorryt van Hoof finished fourth, and the WSOP bracelet winner, Max Silver, took the fifth spot.
Final Table Results
1. Alexander Norden – €93,300
2. Niko Soininen – €64,300
3. Arvi Vainionkulma – €41,000
4. Jorryt van Hoof – €29,640
5. Max Silver – €23,960
The €5,300 EPT Prague Main Event attracted 1,174-entrants, and 16-players are in with a shout of winning the €1m first prize at the end of Day 4, and the last €10,300 High Roller is currently in motion with half of the 240-entrants still involved as we move towards the end of Day 1.
