Oleksandr Shcherbak Wins WSOP Europe €1100 Monster Stack For €117,708

First blood in the WSOP Europe in Rozvadov went to Ukrainian Oleksandr Shcherbak, who took down the €1100 Monster Stack opener at Leon Tsoukernik’s Kings Casino and walked off with €117,708 in the festival’s opening event.

The Kiev man was one of 561 entries who were fighting it out for the €538,280 ($633,673) prizepool, a multi-national field which included the likes of Chris ‘Jesus’ Ferguson, Phil Hellmuth, Belgium’s former November Niner pair of Pierre Neuville and Kenny Hallaert, USA’s Allen ‘Chainsaw’ Kessler and the (very) local favourite Yehuda ‘chiKKita baNNana’ Cohen, who last year came so close to lifting a WSOP Circuit ring at the Kings – just a stone’s throw from his massage parlour across the street!

With 11 WSOP bracelets up for grabs in the festival which runs until November 10th, Shcherbak was looking to emulate two other Ukrainian poker players – Oleksii Kovalchuk and Igor Dubinsky – who had won theirs in Las Vegas in 2011 and 2012 respectively, but with only one small career cash to date it would be a tough ask.

Nevertheless, reaching the final table and securing over €7,000 seemed to free his play up and he dismissed 5 of the final 9 himself – sometimes with the requisite ‘river luck’ that separates the winner from the also-rans so often in tournament play.

Once he found himself heads-up against Bulgaria’s Viliyan Petleshkov his continuous aggression wore his adversary down and the final hand saw a classic race when Shcherbak’s 7♥ 7♠ faced Petleshkov’s A♥ Q♠, the Ukrainian flopping a set and bagging the title, the coveted bracelet and a very healthy payday of €117,708.

Final Table Results

The WSOP Europe at Kings Casino looks set to be one of the biggest of all time, numbers already increased for the €10,350 buy-in Main Event which will start on November 4th with many of the biggest stars in the game set to appear in the €111,111 High Roller for One Drop which takes place the day before on November 3rd.