As expected after the sizeable Day 1A field, the European Poker Tour stop in Prague, the Czech Republic, has shattered its previous record in drawing in over 1000 players.
Day 1B on Friday saw a massive flood of participants join the fray. While the Thursday numbers of 389 players were quite decent, the 609 that showed up on Friday pushed the total number of players to 998. As registration for the tournament was to continue until the start of Day 2 on Saturday morning, it became very likely that the final figures would breach the 1000 mark.
By the time the action was done on Friday night, there were nearly as many survivors in the Day 1B field that had been in action on Day 1A. 369 players emerged from the carnage on Friday, with 2013 World Series of Poker “November Niner” Amir Lehavot ending up not only the day’s chip leader but also of the tournament. His 229,300 in chips easily outpaced Day 1A chip leader Tiberu-Florian Georgescu’s 191,000 count and he was joined by several top pros heading to Day 2. Luca Pagano, Martin Finger, Eugene Katchalov, Bertrand ‘ElkY’ Grospellier and Daniel Negreanu were also fortunate enough to make it out of the Day 1B massacre.
579 players stepped back into the Hilton Prague on Saturday afternoon (early morning U. S. time), but they still weren’t sure what they were playing for. Before the cards hit the air, nine more players entered into the tournament to bring the final count to a staggering 1007 runners, a 143-player increase over the record-setting field from 2012. The final prize pool totaled a healthy €4,883,950, which will be shared by 151 players, and the eventual champion will take home a nice Christmas present (or whichever holiday the champion follows) in winning €889,000.
With only six levels of play scheduled for the day, the short stacks looked to chip up early or prepare for their trips home. Some of those shorter stacks, such as Oleksii Kovalchuk, Toby Lewis and Joseph el Khoury, were knocked off very early in the day while Lehavot maintained his chip stack. As the afternoon wore on, the defending champion of the tournament, Ramzi Jelassi, was stopped in his pursuit of a repeat when he went to the races against Nikov Georgiev in what would be a particularly interesting hand.
After a bet from Elfad Mammadov, Georgiev pushed out a three bet and Jelassi, on the short stack, moved all in from the small blind. Mammadov took his sweet time in deciding what to do, tanking for almost five minutes before eventually sliding his cards to the muck even though he had both Georgiev and Jelassi covered. Georgiev called and tabled pocket fives against Jelassi’s A-Q, which caught magic on the flop of Q-K-J. That magic switched to Georgiev on the turn with a five and, looking for only a ten to save him, Jelassi would see a nine to end his tournament (Mammadov explained the delay in his decision in that he was “getting the right price”).
As Lehavot worked his stack upwards steadily throughout the Day 2 play, other players preferred to use huge jumps to overtake him. Sebastian Saffari (one of the players on the Day 1A leaderboard) made his move first, breaking the 400K mark early in the evening. By the time the final hand was dealt for the night, however, Walid Bou Habib and Jonathan Little had bypassed him to sit atop the ladder heading to Day 3.
1. Walid Bou Habib, 509,000
2. Jonathan Little, 471,100
3. Dmitry Ponomarev, 462,000
4. Ka Kwan Lau, 440,000
5. Szabolcs Mayer, 428,200
6. Sebastian Saffari, 428,000
7. Amir Lehavot, 427,500
8. Ihar Koshal, 417,000
9. Sergey Baburin, 413,800
10. Artem Romanov, 399,700
Top professionals such as Kevin Iacofano (380K, 12th place), Ana Marquez (319,400, 17th), Jan Sjavik (269K, 23rd), Max Silver (259K, 24th), Ludovic Lacay (242,800, 25th) and Ari Engel (240,300, 26th) are all in the Top 30 with 189 players left.
Day 3 action begins in about seven hours, with the first order of business to burst the money bubble. From those 151 lucky players will eventually emerge the next EPT Prague champion, scheduled to be crowned on Wednesday.
