There are still a few tournaments to dust off of the books before we close the 2013 calendar year. One of those is the European Poker Tour stop in Prague, the Czech Republic, which started yesterday and has become one of the more well-attended tournaments on the EPT circuit over the past couple of years.
The players filed into the tournament room at the Hilton Prague looking to be the latest to claim glory (and a boatload of cash) on the EPT. From the start of the tournament, such players as Juha Helppi, Shannon Shorr, Tobias Peters, Jonathan Little, John Eames and Steve O’Dwyer were in their seats with the ambitions of building a large chip stack to carry into Day Two on Saturday. As the day went along, others such as Max Silver, Jonathan Duhamel, Anton Wigg, Dan Kelly, Toby Lewis and Chris Brammer would join them in the fight.
Michael Tureniec was one of the players who made an early move in the tournament, making a tough call in what turned into a nice sized pot. Tureniec and three other players were looking at a board of A-5-3-8-3 and, after checking his option, Albert Daher decided to challenge the former EPT champion in putting out a pot sized bet. Tureniec pondered his decision and made the call, which proved to be the correct move as he tabled his A-Q to take down the pot and move up to 43,000 in chips.
By the time the latecomers had made their way to their seats, 389 players had signed up for Day 1A. The outstanding Day 1A numbers are giving many of the combatants hope that this year’s edition of the EPT Prague will blow past the record set during last year’s competition. In 2012, 864 players showed up for the tournament, with Ramzi Jelassi defeating Sotirios Koutoupas to capture the EPT trophy and the €835,000 first place check.
Many of the top pros who came into the day with ambitions of winning the championship have already been eliminated from contention, however. Kimmo Kurko, Vanessa Selbst, Matt Perrins, Balasz Botond, J. C. Alvarado, Jake Cody, Jeff Rossiter, Wigg and Brammer would all be on the rail before the dinner break as a pro that has had arguably his most successful year on the tournament circuit made his move to the top of the leaderboard.
Ari Engel (who has an astounding 38 cashes in 2013) made his move late in the night, going to battle against an almost evenly stacked opponent. After getting five bet pre-flop, Engel would make the call and, once the flop fell eight high, got his chips in against his opposition. Engel’s pocket Kings were in outstanding shape versus his opponent’s pocket tens and, after neither of the two tens remaining in the deck came out, Engel found himself temporarily in the chip lead with 160K in chips.
There is a reason that Engel’s lead was temporary. Sneaking by pretty much everyone at the EPT Prague, Romania’s Tiberu-Florian Georgescu was able to amass enough chips over the last half of the final level of the night to eclipse Engel. He will hold the honor of being the Day 1A chip leader and will come back on Saturday (along with the other 210 survivors) to continue the fray:
1. Tiberu-Florian Georgescu, 191,100
2. Ari Engel, 172,800
3. Ronny Voth, 166,400
4. Sebastian Saffari, 162,000
5. Simon Mattsson, 141,400
6. Vinicius Barrel Teles, 121,500
7. Roman Korenov, 120,100
8. Ivan Glushkov, 116,800
9. Anaras Alekberovas, 115,600
10. Paolo Compagno, 111,900
Day 1B is in play as we speak and those that didn’t get in on the Day 1A action are getting their chips into action. One of those players is Team PokerStars Pro Daniel Negreanu, who is looking for a few more Player of the Year points to solidify his place on the top of that leaderboard for 2013 (he spent Thursday finishing runner-up to tennis legend Rafael Nadal in a special charity tournament). By the end of Friday’s play, the final numbers will be in as to players and the prize pool for the EPT Prague. The champion will be crowned on Wednesday.
