The European Poker Tour (EPT) is back in Prague for the fifth time this week as players set their sights on a first prize of more than three-quarters of a million Euros. Held at the Golden Prague Poker Room in the Hilton Prague Hotel, the $5,300 No-Limit Hold’em event started with two Day 1 flights on Monday and Tuesday and is slated to run through Saturday. The total field of 722 players (234 on Day 1A and 488 on Day 1B) eclipses the previous EPT Prague high mark of 584 set in 2009, during EPT Season 6. Players from Day 1B are dominating the leaderboard heading into Day 2 (though with so many more runners on Tuesday, that wasn’t unexpected), with Russia’s Andrey Saenko topping everybody behind a stack of 200,800 chips.
Saenko has a modest live tournament record, with just six total cashes, five of which were in his home country of Russia. He has a small win on the Russian Poker Tour (RPT), though his largest cash – $41,600 – was for a runner-up finish in the $820 + $80 “Grand Event” at RPT Kiev in 2010. His latest live venture into the money came in this summer’s World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event, where he placed 373rd for $30,974.
Notables returning for Day 2 include Jude Ainsworth (151,700 chips), Ville Wahlbeck (121,900), Chris Moorman (115,000), Liv Boeree (108,700), James Akenhead (105,600), Vitaly Lunkin (95,900), 2011 WSOP Main Event runner-up and Czech Republic native Martin Staszko (55,600), Gus Hansen (52,600), Eoghan O’Dea (50,800), Eugene Katchalov (46,600), Johnny Lodden (39,000), Daniel “jungleman” Cates (37,400), 2010 WSOP Main Event champion Jonathan Duhamel (24,100), Mike McDonald (22,400), Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier (17,400), and Andrey Pateychuk (14,600), who jumped into another tournament just a day after winning the World Poker Tour (WPT) event in the same city.
This year’s WSOP Main Event champ, Pius Heinz, was knocked out in Day 1B, as was former tennis superstar Boris Becker, who was one of the many pelts collected by Andrey Saenko.
The 772 players created a prize pool of €3,501,700. The top 104 finishers will make the money, with €7,500 as the min cash and €775,000, or about $1,040,167, going to the winner. Here is how the prize structure breaks down:
1. €775,000
2. €480,000
3. €270,000
4. €205,000
5. €160,000
6. €125,000
7. €90,000
8. €66,700
9-10. €48,000
11-12. €35,000
13-14. €27,000
15-16. €23,000
17-24. €20,000
25-32. €17,000
33-40. €15,000
41-56. €13,000
57-72. €11,000
73-88. €9,000
89-104. €7,500
Play will resume on Wednesday at noon local time as the players from both Day 1 flights will form one combined field for Day 2.
European Poker Tour Prague – End of Day 1 (Combined) Chip Leaders
1. Andrey Saenko – 200800
2. Mads Wissing – 178300
3. Max Silver – 177100
4. Jude Ainsworth – 151700
5. Mauri Dorbek – 147800
6. Denys Drobyna – 145600
7. Danilo Donnini – 142600
8. William Thorson – 133400
9. Vedzizhev Beslan – 132200
10. Jesus Cortes – 131200