EPT8 Coverage - Prague

Player Lists

• EPT8 Prague Main Event - Day 4 players
• EPT8 Prague Main Event - Day 3 players
• EPT8 Prague Main Event - Day 2 players
• EPT8 Prague Main Event - Day 1b survivors
• EPT8 Prague Main Event - Day 1b players
• EPT8 Prague Main Event - Day 1a survivors
• EPT8 Prague Main Event - Day 1a players
• EPT8 Prague Main Event - Nationalities - in pdf
• EPT8 Prague Main Event - Total Players

Gallery

Payout

A record breaking 772 players bought into EPT Prague contributing to an enormous €3,501,700 prize pool. Key facts include a bubble in 105th position, a min-cash of €7,500 and a huge €775,000 winner's purse for first place. Top that up with a trophy and Shamballa bracelet an you've got quite some return on your €5,300 buy-in.

Side Events

• #2 - €300 NL Turbo Bounty
• #5 - €300 NL Turbo
• #6 - €1k NL Turbo Bounty
• #8 - €2k
• #9 - €1k NL Turbo PLO
• #10 - €500 NL Turbo Bounty
• #12 - €1k NL

Final Table

Seat 1: Mads Wissing, 29, Copenhagen, Denmark – 420,000
Wissing is a well-respected cash game and tournament player in Denmark
who is known for his merciless style. He is close friends with other
Danish pros such as 2008 world champion Peter Eastgate, EPT4 Barcelona
winner Sander Lylloff, EPT2 Copenhagen champion Mads Andersen and
Claus Bek Nielsen. His live tournament deep runs include last year’s
WSOP Main Event when he was eliminated in 25th place by Sweden’s
William Thorson.

In September, Wissing made the final of the Partouche Main Event in
Cannes before being knocked out in ninth by the eventual champion Sam
Trickett. He also recently competed in the International Federation
of Poker’s World Championships as part of a seven-man Danish team that
included Gus Hansen, Team PokerStars Pro Theo Jorgensen, Mads Andersen
and Lars Bonding. As well as his live successes, Wissing has also won
several online tournaments including two Sunday majors.

Seat 2: Guillem “GabrielMoyaa” Usero, 21, Valencia, Spain – 1,405,000
Usero has been playing poker for two and a half years, the last two as
a pro. He mainly plays online cash games – NL $3/$6 to $25/50 levels
and occasionally online tournaments, his best online result being
third in a $100 Rebuy tourney on PokerStars for around $100k. He also
plays live tourneys and his best live result to date – apart from
making the EPT Prague final – was fifth place at WPT Barcelona last
May for €40,000. He also cashed in the Estrellas Madrid Main Event
last February.

Seat 3: Nicolas Levi, 28, living in London, originally from Paris,
France – 5,690,000
Levi came across poker quite by accident, seven years ago, while he
was studying computer science in the UK. On his laptop, Levi
discovered “a totally different game, a mix of psychology and
mathematics”. He said: “From the very first hand, I thought ‘this is
the game for me’. Beating chance seemed a very exciting challenge.”
Since then, Levi has become a regular on the international poker
scene, and never without his signature trilby hat. The Season 8 EPT
Prague final is not his first; way back in Season 3, Levi made the
final of EPT Dortmund, finishing seventh place for € 85,700. He has
also achieved numerous other deep runs; his four WSOP finals include
fifth in the 2010 WSOPE Main Event for £208,119 and sixth in the
$10,000 Pot-Limit Hold'em Championship for $114.525. Levi been based
in the UK since 2000 – and in London for the last four years.

Seat 4: Martin Finger, 21, Frankenberg, Germany – PokerStars qualifier
– 5,800,000
Business science student Martin Finger has been playing poker for
about three years, kicking off in home games with friends before
finding his way into online poker. This is where he thrives, and he
has already earned Supernova Elite status on Pokerstars. Online he
grinds the Heads-Up Sit N Gos but he also plays a lot of EPTs. As well
as winning his seat to Prague, he qualified for EPT Loutraki a few
weeks ago but didn't cash. He has done well in EPT side events however
including runner-up in the EPT Barcelona €1k event for €42,000, third
in the EPT Barcelona Heads-up tourney in Season 7 and ninth in a €1k
EPT7 Berlin side event. Making the final at EPT Prague – where he’s
guaranteed at least €66,700 - is by far his biggest live score to
date.

Seat 5: Andreas Wiese, 35, Hannover, Germany – 1,670,000
Wiese has been playing poker for six years, mainly focusing on live
games. He’s been playing tournaments for a couple of years – his best
result to date being sixth place at EPT Vienna last season. That was
his first major event but he also came third in a €1k side event here
in Prague last year and was 14th at EPT Snowfest in March. He
regularly plays cash games at his local casino in Hannover and
considers himself a “semi-professional” although still working as an
anaesthesist at Hannover Hospital.

Seat 6: Ari "BodogAri" Engel, 28, Brooklyn, New York – 1,670,000
Back in his college days, Engel used to watch his roommate play online
poker, but he didn’t start pursuing the sport himself until after
graduation. When he finally threw a few bucks on to a poker site, it
only took ten days of gains to convince him to quit his job and take
up the game full-time. Since then, Engel has earned close to $2.5
million online, at one point climbing to the very top of the online
player rankings. He's also begun to amass a respectable live record
that includes two WSOPC rings and more than $500,000 in cashes. Things
have gone so well for Engel that he's recently begun to give lessons
on tournament poker (see www.ariengel.com for more info) and his
students' results indicate that "BodogAri" knows how to teach the
game. Now based in Canada, Engel won his seat on PokerStars. This is
his first ever EPT.

Seat 7: Denys Drobyna, 28, Kyiv, Ukraine – 1,180,000
Drobyna is a full-time poker pro who mainly plays online – No Limit
cash games at the $5/$10 to $25/$50 levels. Online cash games are his
bread-and-butter and he hardly ever plays online tourneys but he does
enjoy competing at live events “for fun”. He made his first EPT
appearance at Dortmund in Season 4 and reckons he has played around
six EPTs so far. His best EPT finish to date was 25th place at EPT San
Remo six weeks ago. His best overall live result was 15th place in a
2008 World Series $2k event for $35,843. He said: “I’ve been playing
well here in Prague, and I’ve also been lucky. I won a couple of coin
flips but you need to be able to fold right, raise right - and get the
right cards at the right time. I feel very focused right now; I need
to be - there are a lot of good players still in.” Drobyna won
Skrill’s Last Longer contest at Prague having outlasted more than 100
players who took part. This means his €5,300 buy-in will be credited
back into his Skrill account.

Seat 8: David Boyaciyan, 32, Amsterdam, Netherlands - 3,770,000
When David Boyaciyan won the Amsterdam Master Classics last month for
€382,200, it took the poker world by storm. Not only had a total
unknown bested some of the best players in the world, but he wasn’t
even a pro. Boyaciyan is a banker by trade who won his seat to the
Master Classics in a live satellite. He said: “My advantage as an
amateur is that I don’t know who anyone is, so I can’t get
intimidated. But I have also been very lucky. I went into the Master
Classics final thinking I’d come eighth or ninth. But I was never the
short-stack, and that stimulated me to just play tight and see if I
could creep up the places.” Following his Amsterdam victory, Boyaciyan
decided to play EPT Loutraki and Prague just to see how far his luck
would run - and finds himself back on another major final table within
the month. But players who think Boyaciyan is ONLY about luck might be
chastened to discover that last summer he played two WPTs at the
Bellagio and final-tabled both. He comes to tomorrow’s EPT Prague
final armed with a lucky chip card protector bearing a photo of his
18-month-old daughter Elina. At the Maser Classics, he had a chip with
a photo of his four-year-old son Joel. Both kids are at home being
looked after by Boyaciyan’s wife Hilda.