Romanian player Traian Bostan scored a terrific victory last night, winning the record-breaking Unibet Open Bucharest €1,100 Main Event. The tournament was held from December 1-4 at PokerFest Club Bucharest in the Romanian capital. Bostan took home the first-place payout of €100,000 for his excellent performance last night. Here is how action unfolded.
The tournament’s final day began with 15 survivors returning to the host venue to play down to a champion. Action started with England’s Eli Heath as the chip leader. The young poker pro remained in contention until the very end, finishing runner-up to Bostan.
Speaking of the event’s champion, he had only three big blinds left at a certain point in the final-day action. At the time there were eight players at the final table, Bostan improved to 12 big blinds, winning some chips from his opponents. From that point on, he started improving with enviable steadiness and consistency, until he was the only other player left, aside from Heath.
Heads-up match between the two players started with the Romanian holding the bigger chip stack. Bostan had a total of 10,560,000 but Heath was not that much behind with his 7,440,000. They both proved to be tough opponents and battled it out for three levels before a winner emerged.
The final hand in play occurred when Heath shoved his 14 big blinds and Bostan called instantly with [Ah][Qh]. The Brit tabled [Qc][7s]. The [Js][Jh][10d][5d][8d] appeared on the board to send Heath to the rail. The player collected a not bad payout of €64,200 for his runner-up finish.
As mentioned above, the latest Unibet Open Main Event was recorded in the festival’s history as the one to have attracted the most entries. The tournament was entered by as many as 603 players, who created a prize pool of €584,910, exceeding the originally announced guaranteed prize pool of half a million euros. There were payouts for the top 80 finishers; min-cashes starting from €2,100.
It is also interesting to note that the tournament attracted quite a lot of local poker players. Entries from Romania represented 40% of the overall field. What is more, the official nine-handed final table featured seven local players. Here are all nine finalists and their respective payouts:
Traian Bostan (Romania) – €100,000
Eli Heath (United Kingdom) – €64,200
Adrian Stefan Calusaru (Romania) – €44,200
Cosmin Cimpeanu (Romania) – €32,800
Gabriel Gavrila (Romania) – €25,200
Dan Murariu (Romania) – €19,400
Eugen Chiva (Romania) – €15,500
Ionut-Alin Tambura (Romania) – €12,400
Juho Launonen (Finland) – €9,910
