Eureka Title and €99,685 for Raphael Wimmer

The Eureka affair in Czech town of Rozvadov reached its natural conclusion yesterday, as Austrian Raphael Wimmer prevailed over the remaining seven players securing the title and the cash prize of €99,685 after a five-way deal.

With this victory, Wimmer added Austria to the list of countries that can boast the Eureka title, becoming the first ever Eureka Main Event winner playing under the Austrian flag.

When the play started yesterday, Wimmer was playing the catch-up with the chipleader, Ruben Pleijster of Netherlands. Pleijster, a semipro player and the man whose surname always takes me a minute to spell correctly, was not able to do much with his big stack, as he was eliminated in fifth spot.

Two players who departed before him were Branislav Ondrus of Slovakia and the local player Josef Gulas, who earned €18,680 and €25,630 respectively. This left the tournament five handed and players headed for the break soon after.

When they returned to play, they’ve realized that the average stack at this point was only about 13 big blinds, which doesn’t leave much room for play and opens the door for Lady Luck to get involved just a bit too much for everybody’s liking. This is why they decided to strike a deal and with Wimmer holding about half of chips in play, he received a lion’s share of the prize pool.

As for the other four, they’ve chopped up the money fairly, so Pleijster’s exit in fifth place did not make much of an impact on his financial wellbeing as he took home €53,215.

Marek Blasko and Rastislav Paleta finished in fourth and third place respectively, but there was no pay jump to account for this, as both Slovak and the Czech took home an equal amount of €59,962 each.

This left Josef Pavelka, another local, to fight it out for the title with the Austrian. Ironically, it was Pavelka who had the least chips when the deal was struck and thus he was allotted the smallest percentage of the prize pool in the amount of €50,646. The deal left €10,000 on the side for the winner, however, and that he still had a chance of making a decent chunk of cash if he could win.

Pavelka started the heads-up with more than 2 to 1 chip advantage over his opponent and it looked like the title could remain in Czech Republic this time around. However, Wimmer, who was already guaranteed a big payday, wasn’t ready to give up and put up a serious fight; the fight that would eventually see him seize the day.

The Austrian did require some help from the poker gods on the final hand as he got his chips in the middle behind. His a9 was trailing Pavelka’s aj and after they’ve both pair their ace on the flop, it looked like Czech was on his way to a yet another double-up.

Pavelka was looking to fade Austrian’s three outs, but dealer refused to oblige, as he burned and turned a 9 followed by inconsequential 10 on the river and that was it. Raphael Wimmer became the first Austrian Eureka champion, taking home just couple of hundreds short of €100k for his efforts in Rozvadov.

Photo: Tomas Stacha