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High and Higher – The Festival in Bratislava Day 3

High and Higher – The Festival in Bratislava Day 3

Wednesday was the busiest day at The Festival in Bratislava so far with almost a dozen different tournaments going on and hundreds of players in the Banco Casino.

305 Main Event Runners

Ronald Zapantis
Ronald Zapantis

With 171 Entries on Day 1b, the total number of entries is now 305. This means the Main Event is 30% there to make the €500,000 guarantee. There are three starting flights left and the bulk of the players have not even arrived yet. Means, we’re confident, that the guarantee will easily be met, probably even be shattered.

After the first two flights, the Austrian Ronald Zapantis is the overall chip leader. He bagged almost 300k chips – ten times the starting stack. Another Austrian was also seen at the tables already, Martin Mauthner, winner of the inaugural Festival in Bratislava is back, trying to defend his title.

Those are the top counts after the first two flights:

PlayerChipsBlindsFlight
Ronald Zapantis296,0001231b
Yasen Dichev278,0001161b
Rickard Larsson256,0001071a
Michael Sklenička250,0001041b
Carsten Lund Larsen245,0001021a
Siegfried Rath201,000841b
Aaron Frese194,000811a
Kenneth Aspestrand180,000751a
Kristiansen Eirik177,000741a
Michel Molenaar177,000741a
Nils Linden170,000711b
Tibor Benko168,000701b
Mateusz Moolhuizen163,000681b
Manuel Blaschke155,000651b
Peter Behr156,000651a
Brian Riemenscheider154,000641b
Tamas Barbarics151,000631b
Jari Karkkainen144,000601b
Ian Vertefeuille145,000601a
Istvan Kovács141,000591a

Happy Roulette Chop

Walter Brunfeldt and Jari Karkkäinen
Walter Brunfeldt and Jari Karkkäinen

One event that already finished this night was the Roulette Championship. After yesterday's starting flights the players decided to play the final today already. The decision was an easy one as the only two survivors quickly decided to chop the prize money after one spin.

The two fins Walter Brunfeldt and Jari Karkkäinen split the prize money, collected €500 each and had their best smiles for our camera. After having crushed the preliminary rounds, the players decided to declare 20-year-old Walter Brunfeldt the winner.

Blackjack Final Looms

Blackjack

Another big casino event, the Blackjack Championship is down to the final four players after the starting flights and a late night Day 2 this night.

The four finalists are Alexandros Leonovs, Ian Vertefeville, Sandeep Nene and Andrew Puglisi. They will play for the title and the lion’s share of the prize pool tonight.

Late Shift for the PLO High Rollers

One of the three most expensive tournaments this Festival was the €1,100 PLO High Roller. For the first time, this event had a guarantee of €20,000. With 62 runners this guarantee was easily surpassed. The winner alone took home €20,000 of the almost €60k prize pool.

It was planned to play only down to the final table, but the players decided to battle it out in the morning hours and a wee bit after 6 am Sebastian Simovic triumphed over Martin Merits.

1Sebastian Simovic€20,000
2Martin Merits€11,800
3Josh Stewart€7,700
4Miklos Bottyan€5,900
5Samuel Stranak€4,700
6Christopher Dowling€3,500
7Julian Herold€2,900
8Mustafa Uyar€2,400

Texas KO Chops for Breakfast

The players of the Texas Knockout Event that started late tonight didn’t want to be outdone by the PLO High Rollers and managed to play even longer.

Half past six, Emmanouil Zacharakis and Sandor Leitenroth were the last two players standing and they decided to chop the prize money, both collecting €3,670 plus their collected bounties.

1Emmanouil Zacharakis€3,670
2Sandor Leitenroth€3,670
3Jarno Kuiper€2,265
4Vladyslav Sidikhin€1,700
5Thomas van Nedervelde€1,415
6Francisco Alonso Sierra€1,135
7Viktoria Bergstedt€850
8Jakub Matusiak€660
9Riben Rasmussen€510
10Mairo Toom€380
11Miroslav Zitka€380
12Attila Pergel€380
13Lena Bjoern€285
14Anu Lilja€285
15Viktor Kavestam€285
16Petter Fjerstad€210
17Lior Goffer€210
18Taras Khilko€210
19Pawl Krol€190
20Vlantouts Kourka€190

Eight Games, One Winner, New Dealers

Oskar Wedde
Oskar Wedde

The Festival Series prides itself in offering the most mixed games, any low-stakes poker tour offers. But even we were overwhelmed by the number of players that wanted to sign up for our 8-Game.

We easily could have filled a dozen tables. Unfortunately, we only had six fully trained 8-Game dealers. But the players agreed to have Hold’em dealers help out and showed plenty of patience, in the proceedings.

After all was set and done, the poker streamer Oskar Wedde won the event and over €2,200.

1Oskar Wedde€2,245
2Ivo Petkov€1,652
3Bernt Elfstroem€1,638
4Terje Jahn€845
5Igor Panak€640
6Ylva Thorsrud€465
7Philippe Laval€354
8Grzegorz Iskra€284
9Arnaud Dreux€284
10Julius Juksaitis€238
11John Lynch€238

Up Next: Day 1C, HORSE, NLH High Roller

Today will be an even more busy day inside the Banco Casino. The Main Event will see Day 1c start at noon and this time we expect well over 200 entries over the day.

At 1 pm the next big mixed game event, the €250 H.O.R.S.E. will commence and at 5 pm the NLH High Roller with a buy-in of €1,100 starts in the Ashoka room in the casino. This event will have a €30,000 guarantee, but we already know that this will easily be surpassed.

Here’s the full schedule for today:

12:00MAIN EVENT DAY 1C - 12 Levels
€500,000 gtd.
500+502x per flight30k / 40
13:00Heads Up Texas, CAP 32, Day 1225+25No10k / 25/20
13:00H.O.R.S.E.225+256 lvls25k / 30
17:00Half 'n' Half (Texas & PLO)110+154 lvls20k / 20
17:00NLH High Roller
€30,000 gtd.
1000+1008 lvls100k / 30
19:00Satellite to Main Event
5x €550 Main Event tickets gtd.
50+108 lvls10k / 20
20:00PLO 4/5/6 Cards (7 Max)225+256 lvls25k / 20
21:00Matching Visions Slots Tournament225+25No-
21:00NL Surprise (package to next Stop added)225+256 lvls15k / 20
00:00Blackjack Championship FinalClosedClosed-