Player of the Series Race Underway at The Festival in Rozvadov
The Player of the Series is The Festival Series’ ranking system for each of the stops on the main tour and rewards the winner with a package valued at €1,700 for the next stop in Malta in September. Players receive points just for participating in each tournament and those that make the money earn bonus points, with most awarded to the winners.
The race is often very competitive and has gone down to the wire on many occasions, sometimes requiring full recount before the winner is declared. This time last year Kare Hallamaa defeated his Finnish compatriot Ville Hakala to take the top spot. Hakala also narrowly missed out in Malta, where Franke triumphed, but he put these disappointments behind himself when he secured the title in Bratislava last November.
The reigning Player of the Series from this year’s Festival in Bratislava is Barrie Dear from Edinburgh, who comfortably collected the title and prize in March. He is back to try and win it again and has already booked a stack into Day 2 of the Mixed Games Main Event (TORSES). He doesn’t yet appear in the top 20 of the leaderboard, as the points will not be added until that event concludes on Thursday.
So far, two side events have reached their conclusion, after which German Florian Hesl leads the way with 27.5 points, following his victory in the €125 NLH Bounty Madness, where he outlasted a field of 34 players to claim €1,015 and become the first recipient of the famous Festival Series winners’ portraits (which are definitely not ai generated btw).
Hesl would not have been expecting to assume the early led in the Player of the Series race, as the other event that concluded on the opening day was the Svitven Special, which had a larger field and a bigger buy-in. The winner of the bigger event usually gets more points than the winner of the smaller, however the Sviten ended up with a 7-way chop and when this happens, leaderboard points are frozen and all players involved in the deal get 7th place points. They all share 3rd place, with NLH Bounty Madness runner-up James Rooney in second place.
Full leaderbord rules and regulations
Its still far too early for any front-runners to have emerged, but one regular contender for the title, Scott “Pokerbrahs” Kenyon won’t be one of them, as he sadly won’t be attending this edition of The Festival Series.
For 2026, we have shiny new system developed by MTTDB.com to manage the scores and provides analytics and insights into the results set from the festival. Who won the most, who cashed the most often and who made the most final tables will all be metrics that we will explore over the course of the series.
Player of the Series Leaderboard after Day 1
| Rank | Player | Country | Events Played | Cashed | Total Points |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Florian Hesl |  | 2 | 1 | 27.5 |
| 2 | James Rooney |  | 1 | 1 | 21.25 |
| 3 | AleXXe |  | 1 | 1 | 20.75 |
| 4 | youre |  | 1 | 1 | 20.75 |
| 5 | Evert Bos |  | 1 | 1 | 20.75 |
| 6 | Benedict Kaiser | | 1 | 1 | 20.75 |
| 7 | Michael Doverklint | | 1 | 1 | 20.75 |
| 8 | Koen Roos | | 1 | 1 | 20.75 |
| 9 | Andreas Klimmer | | 1 | 1 | 20.75 |
| 10 | Serghei Zglavoci |  | 1 | 1 | 19.25 |
| 11 | Johannes Goossens | | 1 | 1 | 19.25 |
| 12 | Rudi |  | 2 | 1 | 18.5 |
| 13 | Jens Voertmann | | 1 | 1 | 17.75 |
| 14 | Vanessa Webley |  | 2 | 1 | 17.5 |
| 15 | Ernst Revenaes | | 1 | 1 | 16.25 |
| 16 | Tim Radke | | 1 | 1 | 15.25 |
| 17 | Martin "Franke" von Zweigbergk | | 1 | 1 | 14.75 |
| 18 | ShinyCakes | | 2 | 0 | 2.5 |
| 19 | Mihail Zglavoci | | 2 | 0 | 2.5 |
| 20 | MAKOP |  | 2 | 0 | 2.5 |
