Final Seven Battling for Eureka Title in Rozvadov

The day has dawned. Today, the new champion of PokerStars Eureka Poker Tour Rozvadov will be named and he will succeed the last season’s champion Martin Meciar of Slovakia. As things stand before the start of the play, Ruben Pleijster from Netherlands looks best to take this honor as he returns the chipleader with just shy of 3.5 million in chips.

Pleijster is a semiprofessional player who concentrates most of his efforts on the online player, but he’s recently started dabbling with live events as well. So far things have been working out for him, as he took down Utrecht Main Event to take home €52k and is now looking good to make a payday of €119,200 reserved for the Eureka Rozvadov winner.

Trying to catch up with him is Austrian Raphael Wimmer with 2,835,000. 24 years young, Wimmer has been playing for three years and two of those he has spent as a professional. His best live result prior to Eureka was €5,900 so he’s already topped that by far as all the remaining players are guaranteed to take home at least €18,680.

The gap between second and third place in chips is almost nonexistent, as the local player Josef Gulas will be returning with 2,805,000. Gulas has already bettered the last year’s Eureka Main Event finish when he ended in 14th place. His biggest cash to date is €21,320.

He is followed by another compatriot, Josef Pavelka, who bagged 2,490,000 at the end of yesterday’s play. After taking a long break from poker, he came back to the felt barely two weeks ago and he is already at a final table of a major event. Good timing.

Marek Blasko is one of two players carrying a banner for Slovakia. With 1.8 million in chips, Blasko will have some making up to do, but he is still in with a decent shot, one double-up away from seizing the chiplead. Add to that the fact that the Slovak already has in excess of $400k in live tournament earnings and it becomes very clear that he is a force to be reckoned with.

Rastislav Paleta came into yesterday’s day with the chiplead, but he has dropped some of those chips along the way. When they return to play today, Paleta will be featuring a stack of 1,655,000, making him almost the official short stack. With one final table already under his belt from this Eureka festival, however, he probably doesn’t feel too much pressure and will be able to go for busto or robusto.

Finally, with least chips in his stack in another Slovak, Branislav Ondurs, with 1,485,000. He has already locked the best score of his career by making it this far and in his own admission he did not have to go through any critical moments to get there.

Those are the seven who will battle it out on the green felt today for the title and the €119,200 first place. It could be a long day or it could be a short one. We’ve seen enough of situations when things go either way to be anything but certain. However, what is certain is that it will be an exciting day in Rozvadov as another small piece of poker history is added to the books.

Photo: Tomas Stacha, Player profiles: PokerStars Blog