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
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:
| Player | Chips | Blinds | Flight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ronald Zapantis | 296,000 | 123 | 1b |
| Yasen Dichev | 278,000 | 116 | 1b |
| Rickard Larsson | 256,000 | 107 | 1a |
| Michael Sklenička | 250,000 | 104 | 1b |
| Carsten Lund Larsen | 245,000 | 102 | 1a |
| Siegfried Rath | 201,000 | 84 | 1b |
| Aaron Frese | 194,000 | 81 | 1a |
| Kenneth Aspestrand | 180,000 | 75 | 1a |
| Kristiansen Eirik | 177,000 | 74 | 1a |
| Michel Molenaar | 177,000 | 74 | 1a |
| Nils Linden | 170,000 | 71 | 1b |
| Tibor Benko | 168,000 | 70 | 1b |
| Mateusz Moolhuizen | 163,000 | 68 | 1b |
| Manuel Blaschke | 155,000 | 65 | 1b |
| Peter Behr | 156,000 | 65 | 1a |
| Brian Riemenscheider | 154,000 | 64 | 1b |
| Tamas Barbarics | 151,000 | 63 | 1b |
| Jari Karkkainen | 144,000 | 60 | 1b |
| Ian Vertefeuille | 145,000 | 60 | 1a |
| Istvan Kovács | 141,000 | 59 | 1a |
Happy Roulette Chop
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
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.
| 1 | Sebastian Simovic | €20,000 |
| 2 | Martin Merits | €11,800 |
| 3 | Josh Stewart | €7,700 |
| 4 | Miklos Bottyan | €5,900 |
| 5 | Samuel Stranak | €4,700 |
| 6 | Christopher Dowling | €3,500 |
| 7 | Julian Herold | €2,900 |
| 8 | Mustafa 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.
| 1 | Emmanouil Zacharakis | €3,670 |
| 2 | Sandor Leitenroth | €3,670 |
| 3 | Jarno Kuiper | €2,265 |
| 4 | Vladyslav Sidikhin | €1,700 |
| 5 | Thomas van Nedervelde | €1,415 |
| 6 | Francisco Alonso Sierra | €1,135 |
| 7 | Viktoria Bergstedt | €850 |
| 8 | Jakub Matusiak | €660 |
| 9 | Riben Rasmussen | €510 |
| 10 | Mairo Toom | €380 |
| 11 | Miroslav Zitka | €380 |
| 12 | Attila Pergel | €380 |
| 13 | Lena Bjoern | €285 |
| 14 | Anu Lilja | €285 |
| 15 | Viktor Kavestam | €285 |
| 16 | Petter Fjerstad | €210 |
| 17 | Lior Goffer | €210 |
| 18 | Taras Khilko | €210 |
| 19 | Pawl Krol | €190 |
| 20 | Vlantouts Kourka | €190 |
Eight Games, One Winner, New Dealers
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.
| 1 | Oskar Wedde | €2,245 |
| 2 | Ivo Petkov | €1,652 |
| 3 | Bernt Elfstroem | €1,638 |
| 4 | Terje Jahn | €845 |
| 5 | Igor Panak | €640 |
| 6 | Ylva Thorsrud | €465 |
| 7 | Philippe Laval | €354 |
| 8 | Grzegorz Iskra | €284 |
| 9 | Arnaud Dreux | €284 |
| 10 | Julius Juksaitis | €238 |
| 11 | John 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:
| 12:00 | MAIN EVENT DAY 1C - 12 Levels €500,000 gtd. | 500+50 | 2x per flight | 30k / 40 |
| 13:00 | Heads Up Texas, CAP 32, Day 1 | 225+25 | No | 10k / 25/20 |
| 13:00 | H.O.R.S.E. | 225+25 | 6 lvls | 25k / 30 |
| 17:00 | Half 'n' Half (Texas & PLO) | 110+15 | 4 lvls | 20k / 20 |
| 17:00 | NLH High Roller €30,000 gtd. | 1000+100 | 8 lvls | 100k / 30 |
| 19:00 | Satellite to Main Event 5x €550 Main Event tickets gtd. | 50+10 | 8 lvls | 10k / 20 |
| 20:00 | PLO 4/5/6 Cards (7 Max) | 225+25 | 6 lvls | 25k / 20 |
| 21:00 | Matching Visions Slots Tournament | 225+25 | No | - |
| 21:00 | NL Surprise (package to next Stop added) | 225+25 | 6 lvls | 15k / 20 |
| 00:00 | Blackjack Championship Final | Closed | Closed | - |
