Located in the heart of Europe, the Czech village of Rozvadov has turned into a favorite stop for some of the world’s largest live poker tours. King’s Casino is currently playing host to a brand-new PokerStars Festival, gathering poker pros and enthusiasts from all around the continent.
Although the Main Event with a guaranteed prize pool of €500,000 and the high roller tournaments will surely be the ones to get greater attention, it can be said that the other events on the festival’s schedule are equally thrilling. A €550 buy-in Super Deep tournament has just been completed with Ukraine’s Oleksandr Strokolis topping its field for €25,769.
Drawing a hefty field of 304 entries, the event took four days of play to see a champion be crowned. Apart from the first-place prize, Strokolis also got the spade-shaped PokerStars trophy as a memorabilia artefact.
Here it is also interesting to note that the Ukrainian player scooped his first-ever live tournament cash by winning the PokerStars Super Deep. Strokolis is a cash game player and can be spotted frequently at the NL$200 and $400 online poker tables on PokerStars. Based in Kiev, he travelled to Rozvadov to play some live cash games. His decision to enter the Super Deep tournament was a spur-of-the-moment one. And as it happens sometimes, our most impulsive decisions may pay us quite well.
Entering the eight-handed final table, Strokolis had to deal with tough competition from all around Europe. That final stage of play saw eight hopefuls from Ukraine, Italy, the UK, the Czech republic, Belgium, Germany, Poland, and France contending for the prestige that comes with the victory and for the first-place prize, of course.
UK’s Daniel Harwood was among the notable finalists. The player came fresh from the PokerStars Festival London, where he finished 2nd in the £990 Main Event, good for £95,000. Harwood took 4th place in the Rozvadov Super Deep for €10,249, adding his payout to a live poker bankroll of more than $280,000.
Eyes are now set on the €1,100 Main Event, which kicked off on March 9 and will be running through March 13. The event features a guaranteed prize pool of €500,000 that may be easily surpassed, if the tournament attracts the attention its London counterpart did earlier this year. The recent PokerStars Festival Main Event held in England’s capital drew 944 entries who generated a prize pool of £824,112.
