Online pro Mats Ullereng defeated Grzegorz Kozieja heads-up to scoop the biggest live cash of his career on Friday, taking a total of €280,560 from the combined €1,432,860 cash prize pool and €835,000 Mystery Bounty one.
The three top prize envelopes of €75,000 were drawn by David Savocka, Eros Calderone and Dean Hutchison, bumping their prize money instantly higher than that of fifth place (they finished 70th, 14th and 13th).
The mystery may have drained from the bounties by the time he went to collect the last five (everyone knew they totalled €13,000) but Ullereng was nonetheless ‘really happy’ to have won – especially with his good friend David Vinaya doing some winning of his own (5th for €122,000 – including one of the €40,000 bounty prizes).
The two of them travel together on the live tournament circuit (observe the rainbow of flags Ullareng has collected for an idea of how well-trotted their globe is) and to end up on the final table with his best mate seems to have filled the 31-year-old Norwegian with almost as much joy as picking up the trophy.
“We bagged up yesterday and had a beer,” said Ullereng, hardly expecting that they would both make the final.
Ullereng plays tournaments exclusively for a living, having quit his job in marketing during COVID, and has been a professional player for four years. He and his girlfriend are expecting their first child, and he dedicated his win to them both, saying, “The baby rungood is real.”
His plan for the weekend is simply to ‘have some beers and celebrate’ rather than dive straight into more tournament action. Asked whether he considered playing some of the mixed games on offer here in Prague (taking place in the same tournament arena today), he laughed and said, “I’m not that crazy!”
€3k Mystery Bounty final table payouts
| Place | Player | Prize |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mats Ullereng |
€280,560 |
| 2 | Grzegorz Kozieja |
€184,700 |
| 3 | Jonas Hagstrom |
€170,300 |
| 4 | Humberto Galindo |
€94,000 |
| 5 | David Vinaya |
€122,000 |
| 6 | Klemens Roiter |
€77,800 |
| 7 | Abdelhakim Zoufri |
€49,400 |
| 8 | Sebastian Malec |
€39,900 |
| 9 | Erik Bakker |
€24,500 |
Can Paul Runcan run good all the way to the EPT Prague title?
It's likely that no one has ever gone into the penultimate day of a week-long, 1,458-runner event with over €1.1 million for first place daydreaming about a three-way chop. The last 16 players in the €5,300 PokerStars EPT Prague Main Event are all still potential straight-up winners of the biggest version of this tournament ever held, with a seven-figure score up top.
The exceptional structure (90-minute levels after Day 2) means that the 16 Day 5 players come back to an average stack of 55 big blinds.
Paul Runcan has double average with 5,040,000 chips, however, and it’s close at the top – Siarhei Alontsau, Anton Bergstrom and Siegfried Kapeller are all within hailing distance, while short stack Dimitrios Gkatzas still has 990,000 (20 BB) to work with.
Bergstrom has been here before – he not only made the final table at EPT Barcelona in 2005 but has reached Day 4 in the EPT Prague Main Event two years in a row. He has already bettered last year’s performance, where he finished 24th for €27,800. Pedro Marques and Danut Chisu, too, have made EPT final tables in the past.
Umberto Ruggeri (1,440,000), third in this event last year for €459,240, can only better his performance by making it to heads up. Managing such a deep run in a 1,458-entry tournament is already an achievement; making back-to-back final tables would be another, and bettering his 2023 finishing position something truly extraordinary.
Vincent Meli, who finished ninth in the Prague Main Event last year, fell short of repeating his performance – but only just; he was 18th for €39,950. Other notables to make the money on Day 4 but progress no further were Nikita Kuznetsov (45th for €19,800), Brandon Sheils (34th for €22,850), Pierre Calamusa (33rd for €22,850) and Fabian Bartuschk (20th for €39,950).
Full Main Event Day 5 chip counts
| Place | Player | Chips |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Paul Runcan |
5,040,000 |
| 2 | Siarhei Alontsau |
4,745,000 |
| 3 | Anton Bergstrom |
4,570,000 |
| 4 | Siegfried Kapeller |
4,440,000 |
| 5 | Barak Oz |
4,000,000 |
| 6 | Pedro De Miranda Marques |
3,970,000 |
| 7 | Tjenno Eskes |
3,160,000 |
| 8 | Danut-Florin Chisu |
2,900,000 |
| 9 | Georgios Vrakas |
1,760,000 |
| 10 |
Alexander Sokolovsky |
1,500,000 |
| 11 |
Jaehyung Park |
1,490,000 |
| 12 |
Umberto Ruggeri |
1,440,000 |
| 13 |
Vidar Furu Oie |
1,305,000 |
| 14 |
Joshua McSwiney |
1,280,000 |
| 15 |
Sylwia Studniarz |
1,160,000 |
| 16 |
Dimitrios Gkatzas |
990,000 |
Images courtesy of Manuel Kovsca, Jules Pochy and Danny Maxwell @Rational Holdings Ltd
