The Matador won once again on the live circuit. Adrian Mateos has closed in on $20 million in tournament winnings at the age of just 25 years old in Prague.
The last three results of Adrian Mateos’s live poker career have been incredible and bear a detailed look before we even talk about the details of how he achieved his latest victory.
Just three weeks ago, Mateos won the $25,500 MILLIONS Super High Roller in the Bahamas, for $520,464. Just a matter of hours later, Mateos had another win, this time winning $1.2 million by taking down the MILLIONS Main Event.
Now, having traveled to the popular pre-Christmas poker destination of Prague for the European Poker Tour festival, Mateos has achieved the amazing. A third cash and a third win, this time in the $10,3000-entry event, taking it down for the equivalent of $196,741.
With three consecutive wins, Mateos hasn’t just banked $1.9 million, although he very much has done that. He’s proved that his poker stamina is right up there with the best in the game. Being able to transition from game to game within a festival is one thing, but from festival to festival, separated by plane journeys between Nassau and Prague via his home in London, Mateos again made it look easy.
With 61 entries, Mateos made it to the final table in the first ‘Red Spade’ event at EPT Prague is fantastic form, but that wasn’t where the day started, with almost half the field still having chips when the first card went into the air.
In all, 27 players began the day, joined as they were by seven Day 2 entries as is permitted in many of the world’s higher-entry events. With €591,000 in the prize-pool, plenty of big names failed to add to their tournament winnings, with Seth Davies, Kahle Burns, Quan Zhou and Yuan Li all exiting without getting a return of their stack of high society.
Approaching the final table, Daniel Dvoress busted just outside the last sit-down showdown. Nine players took their seats, but only eight would be paid, and it was the unfortunate Austrian Matthias Eibinger who would bust in 9th place. All-in for 11 big blinds, Eibinger held ace-king and was in great shape against Tsugunari Toma’s ace-nine. But although a harmless ace came on the flop, the nine on the turn, combined with no help for Eibinger on the river sent Eibinger home as bubble boy.
With eight left, Arsenii Karmatckii was the first player to bust after he lost a coin-flip to go home in 8th for €23,670, before Orpen Kisacikoglu saw his chances straight-flushed out of contention by the eventual winner, leaning he went out in 7th place for €30,180.
With six players left, Tsugunari Toma’s luck finally ran out, the Japanese player busting to Vladimir Troyanovskiy. Team partypoker Pro Bertrand ‘Elky’ Grospellier was next to find himself out of the running, with trip queens going down against Derek Ip’s flopped full house.
Having lost a couple of crucial doubles to Grospellier before the Frenchman busted, Troyanovskiy was short-stacked and would depart in fourth place to his countryman, Anton Yakuba. Yakuba called Troyanovskiy’s shove with pocket sevens holding ace-jack and flopped a jack to bust his compatriot.
With the play three-handed, Mateos had largely stayed out of the line of fire, but he put himself into a huge coinflip situation when he called Derek Ip for a pile of chips. Ip had made the all-in move with pocket jacks, but Mateos’ ace-queen call met with success when a queen arrived on the turn.
Anton Yakuba was at a 1:2 disadvantage heads-up and Adrian Mateos made the lead count. In the end, having slipped further behind, Yakuba hero-called on the river of a hand where Mateos held two-pair. Yakuba held just king-high, and despite cashing for €128,400 in being runner-up, that paled against Mateos’ result of €177,500.
EPT Prague $10,300 No Limit Hold’em final table results:
| Place | Player | Country | Prize |
| 1 | Adrian Mateos | Spain | € 177,500 |
| 2 | Anton Yakuba | Russia | € 128,400 |
| 3 | Derek Ip | Hong Kong | € 82,840 |
| 4 | Vladimir Troyanovskiy | Russia | € 62,720 |
| 5 | Bertrand Grospellier | France | € 48,520 |
| 6 | Tsugunari Toma | Japan | € 37,870 |
| 7 | Orpen Kisacikoglu | Turkey | € 30,180 |
| 8 | Arsenii Karmatckii | Russia | € 23,670 |
