Four-minute blinds and 400 chips. Three-handed. A randomized prize element. Spin & Go single-table tournaments bear some relation to the six-day, deep-stacked marathon featuring 90 minute blind levels that is the EPT Prague Main Event, in the way that a racing Miniature Pinscher does to a strolling Great Dane.
Poker was a niche pastime that took off in the boomtime of the 2000s; now it has become so popular it has developed subcultures of its own.
There are, for example, Spin & Go professionals, specializing in this high-speed type of tournament poker, sometimes without ever having set foot in a brick-and-mortar card room. All three of Sunday’s finalists were in that Spin Pro category, including winner Carlos Gurdiel, a Spanish former Supernova Elite player on PokerStars who had previously claimed a Platinum Pass playing his chosen variant.
PokerStars has been working up to a Spin & Go Championship for a while (there was a small-scale trial run at EPT Barcelona), and this 81-player, multi-flight invitational seems to have scratched the itch that many players had to transfer Spins to the live arena. It certainly entertained the rail.
There were seven special guests (including PokerStars Ambassador Felix Schneiders) dotted amongst 74 qualifiers, who made their way to Prague via a number of online paths and sometimes, like Argentine Gonzalo Colina, multiple travel routes: he journeyed for nearly 24 hours straight to take his seat in the Championship, his first-ever live event.
After three starting rounds (first player to four wins progressing), the randomized prizes kicked in, and today the envelopes contained €2,000, €5,000 and €10,000, drawn before the first game.
These spot prizes went to the winners of that first game – these were Carvalho (€2K), fellow Brazilian and poker buddy Murilo Monteiro (€10K) and Maksymilian Chodacki from Poland (€5K).
There were no runaway five-in-a-row winners in the semi-finals; it was tight on all three tables. The scores on the doors at the end of the penultimate round:
Table 1
- Francisco Andujar - 3
- Danilo Carvalho - 2
- Mantas Meskevicius - 5
Table 2
- Sergio Carro - 2
- Maksymilian Chodacki - 3
- Carlos Gurdiel - 5
Table 3
- Alejandro Peinado Guillen - 4
- Pietro Pisacane - 2
- Murilo Monteiro - 5
The closest fight of the semi-final was between Alejandro Peinado (aka Casino streamer Andypsx) and Murilo Monteiro, heads up in the final game with four wins apiece.
The key hand from this last match saw Monteiro all-in and at risk with a straight draw (
) on a 
flop vs. Peinado’s pair of eights. The turn bricked a 
but the river 
hit for Monteiro, giving him the big stack that could take a double from Peinado in return before finishing him off with a button shove with 
, spiking another straight vs. Peinado’s final 
.
This left the last three players, Carlos Gurdiel, Murilo Monteiro and Mantas Meskevicius six swift victories from the trophy and €25,000 first prize.
Gurdiel stormed ahead to five wins while Monteiro and Meskevicius banked two apiece. This meant that every game could be the last, and the rail surged in anticipation; it turned out to be a quick finish.
Monteiro busted first, calling short-stacked with 
on the big blind when Gurdiel moved in on the button with 
. Gurdiel paired his king and set his sights on Meskevicius.
A few hands later, he took the shot: Gurdiel called on the button (60) and called again when big blind Meskevicius raised to 135 (with 285 behind). On the 
flop, Meskevicius led for 85, called again. The turn brought the 
and a shove from Meskevicius. Gurdiel snapped with 
for the bottom end of the available straight, and there was nothing his opponent’s 
could do to keep him in the running.
With the €25,000 top prize now in the hands of a delighted Gurdiel, the other two had a one-game sudden death playoff to break their tie and determine the second and third places.
Meskevicius doubled early to take a big chip lead, but Monteiro found two doubles of his own in a row (first with pocket jacks vs. 
as Maskevicius tried to finish him off, then with a trips-spiking vs. 
). This left Meskevicius with chip dust and his final hand did not see the start of a Monteiro-like comeback.
Runner-up Monteiro took €15,000, a hefty prize for a regular (professional) $5-level player, who won his way into this Championship by topping a low-stakes leaderboard.
“My first two tables were crazy difficult,” he says. “I had opponents who play $100 up to $1K Spins. But it was a lot of fun.”
He added, of the experience playing a type of poker born online for the first time with 3D chips while staring down a real person, "This experience is what every poker player wants. Something more personal, getting off the computer, meeting people who before you only knew by nicknames.”
Images courtesy of Manuel Kovsca, Jules Pochy and Danny Maxwell @Rational Holdings Ltd
