After four days of intense play, the final dozen players at this season’s EPT Prague Main Event have been confirmed and it is the Hungarian player Norbert Szecsi who has the chip lead heading into the penultimate day.
Taking place at the Hilton hotel in Prague, this year’s EPT Prague Main Event has seen 1,154 entries in what has been a monumentally popular poker festival. Prague is always great at Christmas, but the EPT has been under pressure in recent years. Some events have been cancelled, such as the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, which was eclipsed by partypoker’s Caribbean Poker Party. If it came down to Atlantis against the Baha Mar Resort, the later won at a canter.
Barcelona has remained a staple on the European Poker Tour, and so too has Prague. On the attendance evidence so far, Prague will remain the Winter Wonderland for poker players on the live circuit for many years to come.
Four days of Main Event fun and games had seen World Series of Poker Main Event 2019 winner Hossein Ensan make the short trip from Germany to the Czech Republic by crossing the border around Rozvadov, where of course he played in the WSOPE events, too.
In the $5,300 PokerStars EPT Prague Main Event, Ensan had been tearing it up, one of the biggest chip stacks in the tournament for days. He didn’t, however, make Day 5 as the German left in 28th place, getting it in good with ace-jack against Luke Marsh’s king-queen. Although Ensan hit a jack on the turn, that was the card that would give Marsh the straight and the WSOP Main Event champ bowed out before the big money this time.
Plenty of others who had got the final 41 players departed without a sweat for a place at the final two tables. Sylvain Loosli, Roman Herold, Gaelle Baumann and Philipp Zukernik all bit the dust, with the latter falling at the hands of Norbert Szecsi where the Canadian player Zukernik made a flush, only to see it beaten by the Hungarian’s full house.
With three tables left, Akin Tuna had the chip lead, and was Szecsi’s main rival for the captain’s hat over the next couple of hours as three tables became two.
With the conclusion of the night’s action coming after a decision was made to reduce the field from 16 to 12 in an extension of the original schedule, players like Dietrich Fast (3.65 million) thrives while others were whittled down to just 10 big blinds, such as Turkey’s Erdal Gulseven.
With everyone still involved guaranteed €55,690 but focusing on the a huge €1,005,600 up for grabs to the winner, the EPT Prague Main Event is sure to have a lot of drama left in the remaining two days.
At the moment, it is the Hungarian player Norbert Szecsi who is the man to catch, sat behind 168 big blinds, over 6.7 million chips.
EPT Prague Main Event Day 5 seat draw:
Table 1
| Seat | Player | Country | Chip Counts |
| 1 | Gaby Livshitz | Israel | 3,925,000 (98 big blinds) |
| 2 | Norbert Szecsi | Hungary | 6,715,000 (168bb) |
| 3 | Vlastimil Pustina | Czech Republic | 460,000 (12bb) |
| 4 | Erdal Gulseven | Turkey | 400,000 (10bb) |
| 5 | Dietrich Fast | Germany | 3,650,000 (91bb) |
| 7 | Dominik Panka | Poland | 1,070,000 (27bb) |
Table 2
| Seat | Player | Country | Chip Counts |
| 1 | Ricardo Da Rocha | Brazil | 2,830,000 (71bb) |
| 2 | Laurent Michot | France | 830,000 (21bb) |
| 4 | Luke Marsh | United Kingdom | 4,380,000 (110bb) |
| 5 | Gab Yong Kim | South Korea | 3,050,000 (76bb) |
| 6 | Tomas Paiva | Portugal | 4,405,000 (110bb) |
| 8 | Mikalai Pobal | Belarus | 2,780,000 (70bb) |
