2024 The Festival Rozvadov Day 9

Yep, that’s all folks, tune in again tomorrow for our final day coverage. But before I head to the buffet for a post midnight snack, here’s a brief update on the other tournaments that are still in progress.

The Festival Queens are still fighting for the crown. There are nine left and the top five get paid.

The PokerListings Cup is down to 16 players.

The PLO Highroller has three players left with Italian Bruno Stefanelli looking masterfully in charge of proceedings.

The Saturday PLO Turbo Midnight Madness is down to seven players, including leaderboard contender Ivo Gadze securing his second cash of the day, after busting the Main Event earlier this evening.

See you in the morning!

We are down the last 24 players in the €550 Festival Series Main Event at Kings Casino in Rozvadov. They will return to restart play at 1pm, eyeing up a seat on the final table and shot at the €80,000 first prize. The top six will also win €10,350 WSOPE Main Event Seats.

Recent Exits

Chip Counts of the remaining 24

Both the PLO High Roller and the Poker Listings Cup are on the bubble now and the Festival Queens (ladies event) is now down to the final table, but only six will get paid.

There are now 29 players left in the Main Event and they need to lose only five more until play ends. At this stage the big chip leader is Alexander Bachman, who has 5.5m. It not even close, the second largest stack currently belongs to Presiyan Tsvetanov on just under 3m chips, with Yann Lormel and Antoine Degiorgio on 2.4m each. There may be some big stacks on the feature table, but that’s on a 30-minute delay, so if you want to find out if there is anyone on there getting close to our chip leader, check out the coverage on Festival Series Twitch Channel with English commentary and on the Kings Casino Twitch Channel (Kings Casino) in German.

Mairo Toom, The Festival Series photographer, who has been providing excellent pictures all week has now given us another gift, as he’s done a breakdown of nationalities of the players still in the main event, with 29 left.

There are currently still five tournaments still in play here a on the 9th Day of the Festival in Rozvadov. Don’t worry, this is not a good night post, I’ll be plugging on until the Main Event gets down to the last 24 players, when they will suspend play for the day. There are still 36 left as I write this and its getting serious, as the big money gradually gets closer.

PLO High Roller

The €1,100 PLO High Roller has reached the final table, but only four get paid and there are nine left. Vincent de Neve has held the lead all the way through and is still dominating with almost three times as much as his nearest challenger. There were 38 entries in total and first prize is a over €11,000.

Festival Queens

The €125 Festival Queens attracted 41 female players, of which 23 are still in contention, including Yilva ‘Jevakim’ Thorsrud, who is playing in her 1,000th live tournament. Andreas ‘Wiseguy’ Hoglund surprised her earlier with a cake to celebrate reaching this impressive milestone. Something else I learned about Yilva today is that she is one of the best shuffleboard players in Europe and is happy to take on all-comers, offering them odds of 3-1 to beat her! I have a feeling this will get tested at The Festival in Malta in September.

Best of the Rest

The PokerListings Cup is now down to 34 players and the chip leader, with almost 500k is Bulgarian Aleksandar Georgiev (average stack is 140k). And finally, the Saturday PLO Turbo Midnight Madness, possibly the sanest tournament in the room tonight, is down to the last two tables. Karev Tralla is still in the mix!

They are now near the end of level 20, with potentially five more to play, however they will stop at 24 players if they get there before level 26. Ivo Gazde, the highest player on the leaderboard is no longer live in the tournament, busting in 78th place while on the TV table. This throws the race for the €1,600 Festival in Malta package wide open. 

The €250 PokerListings Championship is the biggest NLH one-day side event of the series. Registration has closed and 89 of the 214 who started are still playing. Many of the leaderboard contenders are taking part in this one rather than the High Roller PLO, including Bulgarian Lachezar Angelov Tsenov. It might be a shrewd choice as the size of the field ensures a lot of leaderboard points will be awarded.

The ladies Festival Queens event is on its first break and has grown to 28 players. Only three have busted so far, the first of which was Anastasia Buk. Today’s field includes 2-7 Triple Draw winner Ylva ‘Jevakim’ Thorsrud and Eva Jiretorn, who has made two final tables already this week. Blackjack Tournament winner Maili Tannbaum is also playing, as is old school UK player Lynn Beaumont, who just confided in me that she’s going to start studying GTO and will crush the next time she visits The Festival Series.

Some people like the fact that ladies only poker events they exist, other dislike it. Let’s take a look at the reasons for and against women only tournaments:

Against: 

• All players should be equal, there’s no physical advantage for men, as there is in many sports
• Its derogatory, according to some women who prefer to play against all-comers.
• They rarely get big fields

For:

• It helps to promote the game of poker among women
• It provides women who like poker with an escape from misogenistic behaviour of some men, when women are present at the table
• Women’s tournaments invariably smell much better than open tournaments

What is your opinion on ladies only tournaments? 

Player of The Series contender Belorussian Siarhei “The Machine” Narozhny has been knocked out in 89th place (€1,134). We’re not sure how he exited, but it must have been explosive as he was sitting on a reasonable stack not long before he hot the rail. The extra points he has picked up will help him close the gap on Thomas Gugerbauer, who did not make Day 2 of the Main Event. It’s highly likely he will jump straight into the €1,100 High Roller PLO, so this might not be his only cash of the day.

Ivo Gadze is the highest placed player on the provisional leaderboard left in the Main Event and a deep run here would give him a great chance of taking the top spot.

Recent Payouts

Maltese Mixed Games Maestro is in the zone today. He’s in the money and up to around 650,000, a bit over average. He has a tough but friendly table and a look of sheer concentration on his face. Not a wine glass in site and as I passed his table, he was raking in a pot to add to his growing stack. 

It was a one-hand bubble and everyone left is now in the money and will pick up a min cash of at least €1,034. As per usual there were a flurry of exits in the next few hands after they reached the money. These are the first players out to be paid in The Festival Series in Rozvadov Main Event.

They’re on the bubble in the Main Event,108 players left, 107 get paid.

Play has resumed in the Main Event after the dinner break, but the players who were on table 96 are missing. That’s because they have been shifted onto table 37, the live streaming table here at Kings Casino. It has just gone live on the Festival Series Twitch Channel with English commentary and on the Stream Like a King Twitch Channel (Kings Casino) in German.

Ivo Gazde and Ferry Ikink are the big stacks on the table.

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Today’s €250 PokerListings Cup is now in play and has 77 at the end of the first level. The €1,100 PLO is also taking place now, but has only 11 runners so far. The start of this event was delayed by 30-minutes due to the high turnout in the €90 satellite for it, which is not yet over, but will dump another eight players in as soon as it concluded.

The Queens Cup ladies are also limbering up for the start at 8pm, including The Festival’s very own Anastasia Buk, who will be joining the game from the start, but possibly splitting her attention between that and the Player Party which is also happening today at Casino Admiral, across the road from Kings Casino.

Players on the main event have been sent o a 30-minute dinner break. They’re not quite on the bubble yet, as 23 of the last 130 will be going home empty handed. 

Out

• Nikolas Bokowski
• Maurice Trapp
• Andre Sorm
• Oliver Kubalek
• Sami Pullianen

In

• Siarhei Narozhny
• Antoine Degiorgio
• Alexander Dovzhenko
• Earde Bearda
• Ivo Gazde
• Ivo Petkov
• Jarmo Salonen
• Mats Rosqvist
• Norbert Krull
• Stefan Ott

They have been playing for over an hour now and the Day 2 field, which began with 249 players has quickly whittled itself down to 182. Only 107 players will be paid and sadly these early exiting players will be leaving empty handed:

• Karev Tralla
• Matthias Kribben
• Aleksander Giorgiev
• Paul-Adrian Covaciu
• Rolf Bechstroem

This is what the remaining players are shooting for:

Players are way back in the Poker Arena at Kings Casino for the start of Day 2 of the €550 Festival Series Main Event. Play recommenced after Franke gave another of his now famous speeches, ending with a standing ovation for the floor staff, catering staff and dealers.

Chip Counts

These are the top 20 chip counts at the start of Day 2

There’s too many players left to list all their chip counts, however you can find these in previous blog posts from the end of each starting day. Here’s some links to help you find them more easily:

Day 1a Survivors Chip Counts

Day 1b Survivors Chip Counts

Day 1c Survivors Chip Counts

Day 1d Survivors Chip Counts

Day 1e Survivors Chip Counts

Day 1f has just ended with 61 of the 183 players who took part squeezing into Day 2 at the last opportunity. There’s too little time before the second day starts to get chip counts, as play resumes at 4.30pm. When the cards return to the air, there will be 249 players left in, all aiming for a slice of the €500k prize pool.

Earlier we reported that there were 184 players in Day 1f and that the total number of entries in the Main Event was 990. However, a recount has brought this down by one player, as in fact only 183 players participated, reducing the overall total to 989.

There were three more winners on Friday in the Open Face Chinese, PLO/PLO8 and the Texas Midnight Madness. Read the story of these events in News section. Full results from these three events and all other completed tournaments can be found on the Rozvadov results page on this blog.

Registration in Day 1f of The Festival in Rozvadov Main Event has closed with 183 entrants, bringing the final total for the event up to 989, just ten players short of meeting the €500,000 guarantee. At the beginning of level 10 there were 97 players left and four more levels until the short day ends.

Day 1f of the Man Event began at 11am an by the 4th level of the day there were 117 entries, with five levels of late registration to go. If there is an overlay, it won’t be by much. But what else is there in store for the rest of the ninth day of the series?

Apart from this final flight, it’s a later start than usual for the other tournaments on the schedule. First up at 3pm is the final satellite of the series, with a €90 buy-in. The target of this satellite is the €1,100 2-day PLO Highroller, which begins at 6pm. Prior to that, Day 2 of the Main Event starts 1t 4.30pm.

Tonight there are three further side events, starting with the €250 Poker Listings Cup at 7pm. Festival Queens is the ladies tournament, which begins at 8pm, costing €125 to enter for those who’s gender qualifies them to play. And the final action of the evening is the €125 Saturday PLO Turbo Midnight Madness at 10pm. It might start off tame, but by midnight hour, it lives up to its name and goes completely crazy, especially if Franke is playing and buying everyone beers.

By the time late registration closed on Day 1e of the Festival in Rozvadov Main Event, 221 players had entered, but only 49 of them would make it through to Day 2. Norbert Krull bagged the largest stack of the flight (673,000), but is still some way off the 761,000 chip lead posted by Jarmo Salonen on Day 1b. Several players who are prominent in the Player of the Series also made it to the end of Day 1e, including Ivo Gazde, who is near the top of the list, on 544,000. Matthias Kribben, who won the PLO/PLO8 didn’t waste any time after his victory yesterday, jumping straight into Day 1e. He made it through, but with a short stack.

Summer may now have finally arrived in the western part of the Czech Republic. The rain that we’ve had for much of the week has stopped, the sun is shining and the 188 players left in The Festival Series Main Event are getting ready for Day 2, which begins at 4.30pm. But they won’t be alone, as there is one final turbo structured starting day which is just beginning now in Kings Casino Rozvadov. Day 1f turbo runs on a 15-minute clock and has 9 levels for late entry. There have been 806 entries in total from the first five flights and this one needs 194 players to meet the €500,000 guarantee.

Will it get there? We’ll let you know as the day progresses. News of the Day 1e survivors and their chip counts coming soon.