Piotr Sztenkiel has been crowned an EPT champion after taking down the EPT Prague €2,200 Eureka High Roller event for €491,040.
The latest Eureka event attracted an impressive 1,652 entrants, creating a prize pool of €3,171,840.
Sztenkiel is a confirmed recreational player who loves the game but only plays for fun. Obviously this was the biggest score of his career, a whopping ten times his previous total record.
It was an impressive performance which saw the Pole sitting with a monster chip lead for a long time and eventually it took him only five hands to defeat Ukraine’s Konstantyn Holskyi in heads-up play.
Action Recap
Antal Hamza, from Hungary, was the man leading the way when the final table sat down for the sprint to the end.
Piotr Sztenkiel was chasing him down in third place with Christopher Wood being cheered from the rail by a group of typically raucous Brits.
Ivan Burmistrov and Matteo Calzoni were the first to leave the table and were very quickly joined by Mariusz Golinski who lost out with a dominated ace held by Wood.
Wood’s minor success didn’t help him out for long. Those chips were soon distributed to his opponents and after surviving a couple of consecutive all-in hands, he was out in sixth place with a €99,670 prize.
By now, Hamza’s impressive chip lead had evaporated to almost nothing and Sztenkiel was ready to pounce.
The Hungarian player was all-in with K♥ 9♠ against the Q♦ 7♠ of the Pole.
The board ran out 8♦ J♠ J♦ :7d A♠ and we were down to the final four.
But the momentum of play wasn’t slowing down at all and we soon saw Sztenkiel collect the rest of Vladimir Lipnitskii’s stack.
Sztenkiel opened to 800,000 from UTG and Vladimir Lipnitskii jammed the rest of his 2,250,000 chipson the button. Everyone else folded and Sztenkiel called.
The Russian flipped over K♠ 10♠ and Sztenkiel showed 10♣ 9♦
The flop ran out 5♦ 5♠ 8♣ to allow Lipnitskii to keep his lead but the 8♠ turn double-paired the board meaning the K♠ played and Sztenkiel was now tantalisingly close to achieving a career defining result.
Sztenkiel was in no mood to let up the pressure, setting up the heads-up battle after calling off a small blind shove from Friedrich Raez. The German got no love and now Konstantyn Holskyi was the only man left to deal with.
There wasn’t to be much of a challenge, though. Sztenkiel’s lead was far too much to overcome and it was all over in only five hands to crown an EPT champion.
EPT Prague €2,200 Eureka High Roller Final Table Results
| Place | Player | Country | Prize (EUR) |
| 1 | Piotr Sztenkiel | Poland | €491,040 |
| 2 | Konstantyn Holskyi | Ukraine | €306,600 |
| 3 | Friedrich Raez | Germany | €219,000 |
| 4 | Vladimir Lipnitskii | Russia | €168,460 |
| 5 | Antal Hamza | Hungary | €129,580 |
| 6 | Christopher Wood | United Kingdom | €99,670 |
| 7 | Mariusz Golinski | Poland | €76,670 |
| 8 | Matteo Calzoni | Italy | €58,970 |
| 9 | Ivan Burmistrov | Armenia | €45,360 |
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