Day 4 of the World Series of Poker Europe Main Event played through the early morning hours to get to its final eight players and now they're going to try and get some sleep before Wednesday's finale.
The journey started with 659 entries and 37 players showed up for Day 4. One of them was Martin Kabrhel, and he had the chip lead for a while, but he couldn't survive the mad grind to the final table. The 2023 champ — Max Neugebauer — did survive, and he's one of the final eight players sitting down to play for over €1,140,000 on Wednesday.
Murilo Garcia is the chip leader and Matthias Gude is the short stack, but every other player will return with at least 20 big blinds and four of them will have at more than 40. Neugebauer is in the second spot on the leaderboard with 44 big blinds.
Let's take a closer look at the final table seat draw.
Fireworks set for top-heavy final table
Seat 1: Catalin Pop – 5,025,000 (20 BB)
Career earnings: $402,791
Catalin Pop is in the one seat with some work to do after the fat of the short stack is settled. Pop has already locked in a career-high score with the €110K prize for eighth place, but they can go for a lot more with an early swing. The Romanian has a globe-trotting resume with cashes that date back to 2014.
Seat 2: Max Neugebauer – 11,025,000 (44 BB)
Career earnings: $2,376,746
The Austrian basketball player is already well-decorated in this event, having won it in 2023. He started Day 4 with one of the low stacks but a heroic day of good luck on all-ins has put him in second on the leaderboard with a shot at a second WSOPE Main Event bracelet. This is Neugebauer's second six-figure score of the year after a victory in the $3K PLO at the Wynn Summer Classic.
Seat 3: Gerald Karlic – 7,900,000 (32 BB)
Career earnings: $2,653,926
Gerald Karlic closed out a monster 2024 with back-to-back six-figure scores for nearly €600K. The first was a runner-up finish on the Austria Poker Tour for €200K and the second was another runner-up finish — this time in the Eureka Main Event at EPT Prague for €396K. That was a huge field with 2,624 entries, and Karlin cashed four more times on that trip. He now has the chance to pump 2025 with his first seven-figure win.
Seat 4: Matthias Gude – 1,500,000 (6 BB)
Career earnings: $81,371
Matthias Gude is the short stack and it's going one way or another early. The German might be ok with that, however, as the €110K min-cash has already more than doubled his entire lifetime earnings. Interestingly enough, €51K of Gude's €81K in career winnings is from just a few days ago when he finished third in the Mystery Bounty. Gude hadn't cashed since 2021 before this series, and nothing more than €4K.
Seat 5: Teemu Jaatinen – 6,975,000 (28 BB)
Career earnings: $94,248
Finland's Teemu Jaatinen makes another player under €100K in lifetime earnings, and Jaatinen will now add his first six-figure win. His previous high score, a £16,650 victory at the 2009 Unibet Open in London, stood for 16 years. Jaatinen had no recorded cashes since that maiden win and 2021, when he reemerged at tournaments throughout Europe.
Seat 6: Claudio Di Giacomo – 10,250,000 (41 BB)
Career earnings: $2,502,965
Italy's Claudio Di Giacomo is well-decorated throughout Europe with a long, long listed of cashes that stretches all the way back to 2012. The highest is a fourth-place finish at the 2018 EPT National in Barcelona, and he can beat that with a fifth-place finish. Di Giacomo makes up part of the logjam of players above 40 big blinds, all chasing leader Murilo Garcia.
Seat 7: Daniel Pidun – 10,350,000 (41 BB)
Career earnings: $1,772,615
Daniel Pidun has three six-figure cashes at WSOP Europe, and they are his only three since 2017. He finished 20th in the €111,111 High Roller for One Drop in 2017, ninth in the €100,000 Diamond High Roller in 2019, and sixth in the €50K version of that event in 2022. The biggest chunk of his $1.7M in career earnings comes from his win at the EPT Berlin Main Event in 2013.
Seat 8: Murilo Garcia – 13,400,000 (54 BB)
Career earnings: $277,844
The current chip leader holds a narrow edge of Neugebauer in second, and he will have to hold off several others in close distance. Murilo Garcia has been bouncing around tournaments since 2022 and stacked up just over $277K in winnings in that time. His best move was a runner-up finish in the Enjoy Poker Tour Main Event in Punta del Este last year. Garcia has already beaten that $101K score with the €110K min-cash.
Play will resume on Wednesday at 4 pm local time and they'll continue Level 30 with blinds at 135K/250K/250K. All of the action will be livestreamed on the WSOP YouTube with a short delay.
Data courtesy of The Hendon Mob.
