Entry record in Prague as all-time EPT ME prize pools reach €600 million

There's No day 1W here at the 2024 €5,300 PokerStars EPT Prague Main Event. You play Day 1A or Day 1B, up to a maximum of twice each (with a hail-mary Day 2 option) – and that’s your window. Even with the hefty buy-in and an old-fashioned number of starting flights, numbers have swelled to 1,397 without the inevitable push of Day 2 entries, making 2024 a record-breaker - the third year in a row that this event has pushed the boundaries.

Last year’s winner Padraig O’Neill took home €1,030,000; expect a similarly life-changing figure to await the 2024 champion as the prize pool is already over €6,700,000. Probably occasionally thinking about that already, but still five days from the final table is chip leader Jacob Amsellem (316,000), who overtook Day 1A’s top stack, Gianfranco Iaculli.

Padraig O'Neill, last year's EPT Prague millionaire

Notable players heading to Day 2 from 1B include Leo Margets (180,000), Davidi Kitai (150,000), Anton Wigg (141,000), Espen Jorstad (133,000), and PokerStars Ambassador Sam Grafton (133,000). Grafton’s fellow ambassadors had a rough ride on Day 1B, but there is always the chance of a late entry in the morning (which will give players 20 big blinds). Here are the top chip stacks overnight:

€600,000,000 milestone for the EPT

A staggering €600 million has now been paid into - and out of - the European Poker Tour's Main Event combined prize pools. As Jan Kores, EPT Media Coordinator, reminisces:

"Breaking €600,000,000 in Main Event prize pools is a feat that connects the EPT's origins with the present day. What also spans the entire era is the immense support from the players, whose passion and loyalty have been necessary prerequisites for the events' long-lasting success.    

"It is fitting the EPT reached the landmark in Prague, where the tour has stopped every season since 2007 and where it traditionally closes out another year of stellar competition under the PokerStars Live banner."

They like big bets and they cannot lie

Alexander Freund picked up the trophy and €15,240 top prize in the two-day €1,100 Big Bet Mix tournament on Tuesday, seeing off Arto Loikakanen after skirting elimination with the short stack heads up. Freund cheerfully admitted to being lucky to win that ‘big Omaha hand’ but seemed utterly unfazed by the swings and roundabouts of the late-stage battle for the trophy:

A glance through Freund’s prior results (all half a million dollars’ worth of them) shows, since 2011, an increasing interest in – and aptitude for – mixed games.  

PLO was the first non-Hold’em variant in which he started to record cashes (often the Gateway Game that starts players on the track to becoming all-rounders), but there followed results in most of the types of poker on offer, including 2-7 Lowball Triple Draw, Seven Card Stud, HORSE and the all mixes (Dealer’s Choice, Mixed Omaha and the fairly uncommon Reverse Mix Max).

Sir Mix-a-lot Alexander Freund

With player interest growing in mixed game events, PokerStars have lined up the inaugural three-day £2,200 Mixed Game Main Event, kicking off on December 12. The 10-Game line-up:

• Fixed Limit 2-7 Triple Draw
• Pot Limit Omaha
• Fixed Limit Stud
• High-Low 8 or better
• Fixed Limit Badugi
• Fixed Limit Hold'em
• No Limit 2-7 Single Draw
• Fixed Limit Stud
• Fixed Limit Omaha High-Low 8 or better
• No Limit Hold'em
• Fixed Limit Razz

It’s odds-on that this will be right up Freund’s street – and anyone else who suffers from Georgina 'GJReggie' James’ self-confessed propensity to getting bored easily. Read all about the birth of the Mixed Game Main Event here.

^{Images courtesy of Manuel Kovsca and Danny Maxwell @Rational Holdings Ltd}