There were 329 entries in the Main Event when PokerStars Eureka Prague hit the poker circuit for the first time in 2011. Back then it was €800 to buy in and the logo had an exclamation point (don’t remember PokerStars shouting enthusiastically at the poker world? The Hendon Mob does). Winner Keith Johnson won €58,400 – less than eighth place in 2024.
This year’s champion Martin Tsvetanov took home €449,034 after a heads-up deal with Gerald Karlic (€396,086), having seen off a field so big it could have been legally incorporated into a small town in most US states.
With one exception (2019), this €1,100 prince of the regional European tours (the gigantic Estrellas Barcelona wears the crown) has grown year on year until a record-breaking 4,732 entries filled the tournament arenas at the Hilton in Prague this week. That's more than the population of Lake Placid.
How big could it go?
What limits the size of a single event? The number of tables and dealers available, how long late registration stays open, and how many re-entries are allowed.
We counted 160 tables (including the permanently buzzing cash room that has occasionally relinquished some seats when tournaments overflowed earlier this week). Playing 10-handed, that’s 1,600 players per Day 1 at the ‘shuffle up and deal’ (in this hypothetical – and vanishingly unlikely – scenario, every player has already registered before the first card leaves the deck). Using Eureka Prague’s Day 1e as a guideline (1,587 entries, with 321 of them single re-entries), that could make the field size 11,520. There is room for expansion yet.
Santerne secures second €50k Super High Roller title
Thomas Santerne, double SHR champThough there were initially three days scheduled for the €50,000 PokerStars EPT Prague Super High Roller, Thomas Santerne needed just two of them to see off the other 24 players, including the formidable Niklas Astedt heads up.
The top two had made a deal for over €350,000 apiece as soon as their stacks evened out after the elimination of Sergey Lebedev in third (€193,000), leaving €25,000 and the trophy to play for. This, and their choosing to increase the blinds from 20K/40K to 50K/100K may have had something to do with the event wrapping up ahead of schedule.
In the end it was a poker tale as old as time, top pair vs. (missed) multi-draw, that saw Astedt take second place. The fifth-place min-cash (a not-so-min €113,000) went to WSOP Main Event winner Espen Jorstad, while Nikita Kuznetsov rounded out the payouts (4th for €140,000).
Santerne got to meet – and beat – his self-confessed original poker ‘idol’ Astedt, whom he now plays against online. “It was a dream to play live against him and to be able to beat him,” he said.
EPT Prague Main Event under way
Gianfranco Iaculli, EPT Prague's Day 1A chip leader. The €5,300 EPT Prague Main Event kicked off on Monday with Italian Gianfranco Iaculli taking the early chip lead, securing a stack of 294,000 after ten levels of play. He tops the first flight’s 146 Day 2 players from a starting field of 466 – comfortably up on last year’s 412 Day 1A entries.
Among the top baggers were Vanessa Kade (188,000), Max Neugebauer (189,000), and David Docherty (154,500), while last year’s EPT Prague Main Event third place finisher Umberto Ruggeri also made it through with 95,000. Day 1B resets the stacks (noon Tuesday) and gives those eliminated (like PokerStars Ambassadors Barny Boatman, Felix Schneiders and Kerryjane Craigie) another bite at the EPT apple.
Images courtesy of Manuel Kovsca and Danny Maxwell @Rational Holdings Ltd
