WPT Prague: Brits in the hunt

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Today marks the start of Day 2 of the WPT Prague Main Event. This attracted 556 runners, the biggest ever WPT European field

218 players through from Day 1a and Day 1b including seven British players, notably Martins Adeniya who starts the day with 205,000 chips, enough to place him sixth overall.

Also making it through from Day 1b were Daniel Carter (143,200 chips) Neil Lusmer (61,100), Anthony Cartwright (22,700), Scott O'Reilly (21,300) and Jon Larson (15,700) and they will be joined by James Akenhead (88,700) and John Eames (44,300) who both made it through Day 1a on Thursday.

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Seat draw for today at http://www.praguepokerfestival.com/prague-poker-festival-news/

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The Prague Main Event of the World Poker Tour is down to just 62 players and the man who is leading them all is British poker pro Martins Adeniya. The cash game specialist managed to quadruple his 205,000 stack to a tournament leading 849,000 and is in pole position for glory in Bohemia.

Adeniya was one of eight Brits who made it through to Day 2 but of those eight only he and Neil Lusmar made it through with chip stacks intact. He won a massive pot relatively early on in the day when he managed to induce the aggressive Swede Michael Tureniec into five-bet shove {K-}{Q-} into his pocket aces and he never looked back from there on in.

Each of the players still in the tournament will return to their seats at 1400CET knowing they are in the money as the bubble burst with just three minutes left of Level 18, the scheduled finish time. The unfortunate bubble boy was Yury Gulyy who saw Thomas Frandsen open shove from the small blind with what turned out to be {A-Spades}{6-Diamonds} and Gulyy called with {A-Hearts}{K-Spades}. The board ran out {A-Clubs}{6-Clubs}{3-Hearts}{J-Clubs}{6-Spades} and with that the bubble had burst and everyone was guaranteed to take home €6,400 in prize money whilst Gulyy left with just another bad beat story to talk about with friends and anyone else who would listen.

Standing between Adeniya and some British WPT glory are 61 other players and amongst them are Michael “SirWatts” Watson (583,000), Jamie Rosen (383,000), former EPT Barcelona champion Kent Lundmark (303,000), Russell Carson (148,000) and the short-stacked Eugene Katchalov (47,000).

Today the plan is to play down to the final table of six regardless of how long that will take


http://uk.pokernews.com/news/2011/12/wpt-prague-adeniya-leads-field-with-62-left-7684.htm

[TightEnd]

Day 3 of the World Poker Tour Prague gets underway later today, with the €3,500 buy-in event at the Kings Casino in Prague boasting a top prize of €450,000.
 
As the action kicked-off on Day 3 of the event, 62 players from the original starting field of 571 returned to play down to a final table of six. The blinds started at 4k/8k with a 1k ante, and one of the early casualties was a short stacked Eugene Katchalov (60th) whose pocket kings foundered against Karen Sarkisyan’s A-Q on an A-A-Q flop.

As the players began to fall, notable names hitting the rail included Dimitar Danchev (54th), Kent Lundmark (52nd), Clemencon (43rd), Kastle (38th), Christopher McClung (27th), and Jamie Rosen (24th).

Another player falling short of their WPT aspirations was start of the day chip leader Martins Adeniya. The UK cash specialist was sitting on a 849k stack and was looking to improve on his biggest tournament cash to date of $58,699. However, later on in the day he had been reduced to just 10 BB and was then eliminated in 19th after shoving pocket eights into Andrey Pateychuk’s J-10.

Thomas Jorgensen (A-J) then shoved his 280,000 stack into his opponent’s pocket eights and was eliminated in 15th Place (€16,830) and after Jan Bendik exited in 7th place (€48,000), the tournament had its final table.

The tournament now resumes at 1500 local time (9am ET), with blinds at 25k/50k ante 5k and the players lining up as follows:

Stanislav Kretz: 6,300,000
Benjamin Pollak: 4,865,000
Andrey Pateychuk: 2,310,000
Sigurd Eskeland: 1,575,000
Adria Balaguer: 1,315,000
Russell Carson: 725,000

All eyes will be on the German pro Stanislav Kretz as the action begins. Kretz only has $1,476 in live  tournament cashes but he is pole position in Prague after busting a whole slew of players throughout the day, including Agris Klaise, Denis Pisarev, Tobias Reinkemeier, Thomas Frandsen and Jan Bendik.

However, Russian pro Andrey Pateychuk  will be the real danger man, with over $1,489,349 in live earnings including a victory in October at the €4,600 EPT San Remo for €680,000

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Less than six months ago, no one in poker really knew who Andrey Pateychuk was. Now he is one of the hottest names in the game, having made the final two tables of the WSOP Main Event, won the EPT San Remo Main Event, and now winning the first-ever World Poker Tour event in Prague.

Pateychuk picked up the second leg of poker’s Triple Crown just six weeks after winning San Remo for €600,000. He earned almost as much as that by defeating the largest-ever field for a WPT Europe event. The €3,500 buy-in tournament brought in 568 entries thanks to a single re-entry option for players and generated a prize pool of more than €1.7 million.

When the final table began, Pateychuk was in the middle of the pack while Stanislaw Kretz was out in front of the pack. The pecking order remained relatively intact as short stacks Russell Carson and Sigur Eskeland exited in sixth and fifth place respectively and Benjamin Pollak followed suit in fourth. The balance of power swung three-handed though, as Payteychuk picked up a large pot off Kretz when Paytechuk flopped a set of kings to take the chip lead and leave Kretz on the short stack. Pateychuk finished Kretz off a little while later when his A6 cracked Kretz’s pocket nines to send him home in third.

That left Pateychuk heads-up with Adria Balaguer. The two began virtually dead even in chips, but Balaguer pulled out front early when Pateychuk shoved A5 into Balaguer’s pocket eights. That hand gave Balaguer a 10-1 chip advantage, but Pateychuk managed to keep rallying back every time his opponent had him down.

Pateychuk pulled out front for good when he double thru Balaguer holding A6 to Balaguer’s AJ. Pateychuk managed to flop aces up to win the pot, then came from behind again on the final hand of play, busting Balaguer and his pocket queens in second when Pateychuk’s A5 rivered the wheel.

The victory puts Pateychuk’s earnings for the year at around $1.5 million and puts him in the elite group of players with two major titles to their credits. The feat is even more impressive when you consider the 22 year old Russian picked up his two big wins within two months of each other.

There will be no rest for the World Poker Tour, as the Five Diamond at Bellagio starts on Tuesday. BLUFF will be on site for the event with daily recaps of all the action.

Here are the final table results from the WPT Prague Main Event:

1st: Andrey Pateychuk – €450,000 (includes $25,500 WPT Championship seat)
2nd: Adria Balaguer – €238,000
3rd: Stanislaw Kretz – €158,000
4th: Benjamin Pollak – €104,000
5th: Sigur Eskeland – €80,000
6th: Russell Carson – €63,000