December is a busy month for poker players with several major festivals taking place simultaneously. With the 2024 WSOP Paradise and the WPT World Championship happening across the pond, PokerStars has taken a stronghold in Europe with its season-ending EPT Prague.
The Prague festival is split into two parts, with the lower-priced Eureka Poker Tour playing out ahead of the main EPT. By the looks of things, the dense December schedule did not spoil plans for PokerStars, as the €1,100 Eureka Main Event went from strength to strength, breaking its attendance record once again.
This year’s Eureka Main Event saw the stunning number of 4,732 total entries, toppling the record set just last year when the tournament attracted 4,403 players. The impressive turnout resulted in just as impressive prize pool of €4,542,720.
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Huge Payday for Martin Tsvetanov
One thing that all poker tournaments have in common, regardless of the field size, is that they always get down to one player holding all the chips and the lion’s share of the prize pool.
For the 2024 Eureka Main Event, that one player was Martin Tsvetanov, who ended up banking €449,034 for all the troubles it took him to outlast thousands of players chasing the title. This is by far the largest score of Tsvetanov’s career, as the Bulgarian pro focuses primarily on cash games. Still, as he was able to show quite clearly, he’s no slouch in tournaments, either.
The tournament field consisted of a mix of professionals and recreational players who arrived in the Czech capital to take their shots. Included in this mix were 99 players who qualified online and 57 of those who made their way to the Eureka Main Event thanks to the Power Path promo.
The record-breaking attendance in the tournament has shown us all once again that there is no lack of interest in affordable poker tournaments and that people are willing to travel to play if they know the potential reward is worth it — and a chance of winning close to half a million Euros in a €1k event certainly qualifies!
The EPT Action Rolls On
With the Eureka portion of the festival now mostly over, the attention can now turn to the European Poker Tour. The €5,300 EPT Main Event kicked off yesterday with the first of its two starting days, and 466 entries are a good indicator that we could be in for another massive tournament, with 10% increase in the number of entries compared to the last year.
The Main Event may be stealing the spotlight, but it’s certainly not the only tournament players have to look forward to in the days to come.
December 12 will see the kickoff of the €2,200 Mixed Game Main Event, a tournament freshly added to the schedule featuring ten different poker variants. With a fairly affordable buy-in, this one should generate a fair bit of interest from experienced mixed game experts and recs who dabble with non-Hold’em games alike.
On December 14, the first-ever Spin & Go Live Championship takes place. Although this one isn’t open to the public, it’ll be interesting to see how PokerStars set things up. The success of this inaugural event will probably be a decisive factor in whether or not live Spins become a standard feature on EPT schedules.
It goes without saying that there are quite a few other tournaments on offer as well, including some Mystery Bounty action. For the remainder of the week, there is no doubt that Prague is the place to be for all poker-lovers in Europe!
