In 2023, the World Series of Poker Europe (WSOPE) arrived in Rozvadov for its third series since the COVID-19 pandemic. With its sixth WSOPE festival again having 15 full events, giving away gold to 15 different winners, the eyes of the entire poker world were focused on the Czech-German border town. The 2022 series saw a top prize of €1.3 million won in the Main Event after another record-breaking attendance piqued the interest of poker players of all levels from around the world, many of whom had qualified on GGPoker.
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A Former Champion Doubles His Tally
The opening event of the 15 was the €350-entry Opener, which attracted 3,503 entries and offered a guaranteed prize pool of one million Euros. The event was won by the Slovakian player Luka Pazma for €120,350. Pazma had to outlast his fellow Slovakian Stanislav Koleno in the final three before beating Bulgarian Andras Balogh heads-up for the bracelet.
The second bracelet winner was familiar to everyone, as a year earlier, he had won the WSOPE Main Event. Swedish player Omar Eljach won the second of his two bracelets, this time in Pot Limit Omaha, when he outlasted Portuguese player Diana Volcovschi and American WSOP serial casher Roland Israelishvili in the final three. Once again, the prize pool of €341,525 was even bigger than its guarantee as the number of players attending the series continued to grow over the previous year.
The third event saw players put up a €1,350 entry fee to enter the Mini Main Event. Eljach continued to roll but finished fourth in a bid to win back-to-back bracelets in consecutive events. The Swede was stopped near the end of a 1,304-entry field as Greek player Sokratis Linaras took home the gold and €310,350 top prize.
In the following event, Eljach once again ran incredibly deep, coming 19th out of 206 in the €2,000 PLO event. Two-time winner Barny Boatman made it to fifth place for €19,875 before Dario Alioto, a firm favorite in PLO fields, outlasted Gab Yong Kim but fell just short, beaten heads-up by Hokyiu Lee for a top score of €91,183.
Dvoress Captures Historic GGMillion$ Crown
After Ermanno Di Nicola won a bracelet in No Limit Hold’em and Wing Po Liu beat Eljach heads up to win in PLO, the action ramped up. Event 47 was a €1,650-entry 6-Max NLHE event that offered a €300,000 guarantee. This was more than doubled to a prize pool of €705,735. Barny Boatman came close to his third WSOP bracelet, finishing as runner-up for €98,850, as Tobias Peters took the title and €153,450 top prize, the Dutch player just pipping Boatman to the gold to win his first-ever bracelet.
In a pioneering event, the standard $10,000 buy-in GGPoker GGMillion$ weekly tournament was moved to Rozvadov as it became the €25,000-entry GGMillion$ LIVE bracelet event, and with it came a massive €600,000 top prize. A field of 72 entries was whittled down to just 14 who would finish in the money.
Players such as Timothy Adams (13th for €241,610), Jerry Odeen (9th for €54,100), and Niklas Astedt (6th for €106,600) all got close. Local player Martin Kabrhel lost out in third place for €260,000, and the last American player, Michael Rocco, finished runner-up for €365,000. And finally, finishing at the top of the podium was Canadian player Daniel Dvoress, who ended his long wait for a live WSOP win when he took the tournament down for a top prize of €600,000, one of the biggest of his career.
Survarna Ends the Hoodoo
After bracelet victories for Swedish players Tobias Garp and Joakim Andersson and Lithuanian player Dainius Antanaitis, Indian player Santosh Survarna, who had never won a WSOP bracelet before, finally took home gold. The 12th event of the series, the €50,000-entry Diamond High Roller, kicked off with 29 entries and 8 re-entries as some of the best in the world battled it out for a €650,000 top prize.
With just six players being paid, Kabrhel once again went close but failed to book the win, as he min-cashed for €103,925. After the elimination of Chris Brewer in fourth place for €185,000, Daniel Dvoress was hoping to win his second high roller of the series and become a double bracelet winner in the 2023 WSOP Europe. He fell two places short as he cashed in third for €266,000 instead, leaving Survarna to claim gold. Beating Chinese player Ren Lin heads-up, Survarna’s win was worth €650,000 to him, but the bracelet was way more important.
“I’m so proud being Indian. After winning a Triton title, I’ve won this. It’s a proud and happy moment. Many Indians also play poker – 4% maybe – and they are very good players. India is growing. Many brilliant players and high stakes players will come. [Ren] is a funny guy, I laugh a lot with him. He bluffed two or three times and I called. Finally, I win a flip!”
Close to Gold
The final two events were both NLHE tournaments. Germans Bernd Gleissner and Maurice Nass won them before the Main Event concluded. The Main Event lasted five thrilling days, and in the end, former professional basketball player Max Neugebauer won his first WSOP bracelet and the €1,500,000 top prize.
With re-entries permitted – not something that has ever been allowed in the Las Vegas Main Event – a total of 817 entries made it the biggest attendance in WSOPE history. Of those 817, just 123 players made it into the money places, with a min-cash worth €16,500. Players including Vladas Tamasauskas (114th), Daniel Dvoress (109th) and Fabrizio Naselli (102nd) all took home that amount before others such as the 2022 WSOPE winner Omar Eljach (89th for €18,000), the 2020 WSOP Online Main Event winner Stoyan Madanzhiev (67th for €22,150) and Swedish poker legend Viktor ‘Isuldur1’ Blom (55th for €27,100) all came close.
Falling short of the final table, Adrian Mateos (42nd for €30,700), Jonathan Pastore (30th for €41,500), and former Main Event runner-up Dario Sammartino (14th for €59,500) all had to make do with a seat on the rail as the final nine convened at King’s Casino Rozvadov for the biggest WSOPE Main Event ever.
The Main Man Wins the Max
When the final eight began their battle, it was the Swedish cash game regular Alf Martinsson who was the shortest in chips. All-in with ace-three, he lost to Michele Tocci’s pocket tens and departed with €148,000. Soon, after Ukrainian Ruslan Volkov left in seventh for €193,000 and Germany’s Nils Pudel departed in sixth for €255,000, The Italian Tocci earned another scalp when he cracked Michael Rocco’s aces with two pair to send the American to the rail for €341,000.
It continued to be the Tocci show before the former basketballer Max Neugebauer took out Kasparas Klezys, as the Lithuanian went home with €464,000. Despite being the one who eliminated the most players at the final table, it all went wrong for Tocci. Covering Eric Tsai when the Taiwanese player had pocket deuces, a deuce on the turn meant Tocci dropped to short stack with pocket sixes, and that unlucky beat was essentially the end for him. On the next hand, Tocci was all in for 4 big blinds with pocket jacks, an easy call for the chip leader Neugebauer holding king-four. The board ran out clean for Tocci until a king landed on the river. The Italian was crestfallen, as a two-outer followed by a three-outer in consecutive hands had turned his dream of WSOP gold into a nightmare, albeit a nightmare worth €639,000 for finishing in third place.
At the start of heads-up play, Neugebauer’s chip lead was almost 4:1, but Tsai got the better of the opening exchanges. Tsai rivered a Broadway straight, and Neugebauer paid him off to further even the stacks, but the Austria Neugebauer had the lead when a historic hand played out. On a board showing Q-8-2-A-4 with two diamonds, Tsai moved all in with the busted flush draw with jack-nine of diamonds. Incredibly, Neugebauer made the greatest hero call of his life, calling with just third pair holding an offsuit jack-eight to become the WSOPE Main Event champion.
Neugebauer Explains His Magical Moment
While Eric Tsai won €891,000 as runner-up, Neugebauer took the WSOP gold bracelet and €1.5 million top prize. After his stunning victory, he explained his thought process around the hero call.
“I just thought, he wouldn’t c-bet from how he played before,” Neugebauer said. “He wouldn’t c-bet his range. I think he would’ve checked a lot of ace-x. It was very, very easy to over-bluff this spot because he has all the bluffs. I felt like it’s just a very decent call because he was playing somewhat aggressive. I felt like he wanted to push it and overtake the chip lead.”
Neugebauer struck a long shot when he took down the WSOP Europe Main Event. The six-foot-eight-inch basketball star fulfilled his hoops… ahem, hopes and dreams when he won his first WSOP gold bracelet. With the ability to call for the win in such a manner, it’s unlikely to be his only success at the World Series of Poker.
Neugebauer is a poker world champion, but his first career aspirations were in a different game. He was a professional basketball player before turning to poker, playing for BC Vienna in the Austrian first division. He also represented the Austrian Under-18 team. When his athletic career came to a premature end, poker seemed like a perfect avenue to funnel his competitive fire.
“I had huge knee problems. When I stopped playing basketball, I started playing poker as well. Just the competition part and the part of improving and working on your game was really important to me and I felt like there was some void that needed to be filled. Poker was that for me,” he said.
| Player | Country | Prize | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | Max Neugebauer | Austria | €1,500,000 |
| 2nd | Eric Tsai | Taiwan | €891,000 |
| 3rd | Michele Tocci | Italy | €639,000 |
| 4th | Kasparas Klezys | Lithuania | €464,000 |
| 5th | Michael Rocco | United States | €341,000 |
| 6th | Nils Pudel | Denmark | €255,000 |
| 7th | Ruslan Volkov | Ukraine | €193,000 |
| 8th | Alf Martinsson | Sweden | €148,000 |
| 9th | Yulian Bogdanov | Bulgaria | €115,300 |
2022 WSOP Europe 2024 WSOP Europe
About the Author: Paul Seaton has written about poker for over 10 years, interviewing some of the best players ever to play the game such as Daniel Negreanu, Johnny Chan and Phil Hellmuth. Over the years, Paul has reported live from tournaments such as the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas and the European Poker Tour. He has also written for other poker brands where he was Head of Media, as well as BLUFF magazine, where he was Editor.
