POTD #195 Final Table Friday: Conor O'Driscoll's EPT Prague Elimination

Connor O'Driscoll's EPT Prague Bust Out Hand

So much American poker media framed the dilemma for where one should spend their December as a battle between the WPT and the WSOP. The Wynn or the Atlantis? Meanwhile, the understated workhorse stop of EPT Prague continued to put up big numbers. Prague saw 1,411 unique entries and 1,613 re-entries for the €1,650 Pokerstars Open, 872 uniques and 352 re-entries for a €5,300 Main Event— very good numbers for a very healthy poker stop that doesn’t require re-entry gimmicks or gaudy guarantees to juice prize pools. If you are someone who chose the Atlantis or the Wynn over Prague, you really should try to go in March for WSOP Europe. Prague is a beautiful and affordable city to play poker, drink pilsners and eat pork knuckle in.

One thing you will not be able to do in WSOP Europe that you can do in EPT Prague is make deals in tournaments. The big winners of the Prague main event— Martin Krakow, Emin Kurtulus and Dimitrios Gzakatas— did make a deal, but while those three were the big financial winners and Krakow ended up hoisting the trophy, none of them had the most eventful final table. That honour belongs to Paawan Bansal. Seven-handed, Bansal ran his KK into the AA of Traian Stanciu and he was left with 50,000 chips, which was 1/3rd of a BB and 1.6x starting stack. Bansal was blinded all-in and doubled up and went on break as the blinds rose from 75k/150k/150k to 100k/200k/200k. He had 150k chips and was about to post the SB, folded three hands and witnessed two players get knocked out and earn him just under €110,000. The first hand was a very interesting hand where no one really “punted,” and in many ways it was a classic AA vs. QQ vs. JJ triple cooler, but it had a lot of moving parts; if you’d like to watch it, you can rewind just a little bit in the video embedded below. If you’d like my analysis of that hand, you can become a premium subscriber and join the POTD Discord community, where I’ll be analyzing the hand for members. You can access the Discord here and read my extra thoughts by becoming a Premium Subscriber, which you can do here.

EPT Prague 5k Main Event, 6 remaining of 1,224 runners.
Blinds 100k/200k/200k (BBA)
Payouts: 1st €1,019,300, 2nd €636,405, 3rd €454,550, 4th €349,650, 5th €269,000, 6th €206,900

Matan Krakow (15.3M) raises to 400k UTG6 with 8♠️4♦️, Traian Stanciu (2.05M) folds HJ, Dimitrios Gkatzas (6.38M) folds the CO, Paawan Bansal (50k) folds on the button, Bora Kurtulus (11.5M) calls in the SB with A♣️Q♥️, Conor O’Driscoll (1.2M) calls in the BB with K♦️Q♦️, leaving 800k back.

Flop (1.4M) A♦️5♦️A♥️: Kurtulus checks, O’Driscoll jams for 800k, Krakow folds, Kurtulus calls.
Turn: 7♠️
River: K♠️

Kurtulus wins the 3M pot and O’Driscoll is eliminated in 6th.