Hwany Lee tangled in a bigger pot with Phachara Wongwichit and had 57,500 behind to the river on which he checked. Wongwichit bet exactly that amount with a single chip behind and Lee reluctantly called all-in.
Wongwichit tabled the for a bluff and Lee doubled with his for just a pair of sevens.
Down to the single chip. Wongwichit survived the next all-in before he was at risk for 4,000 on the button. Lee had raised and Levan Rcheulishvili in the big blind called. The two active players checked down the entire board and Lee revealed . Wongwichit was unable to spin it up with and Rcheulishvili also earned no portion of the pot with the .
With 32 players out of 52 entries remaining and seven minutes left on the clock, the final hands of the night were drawn. Only three more hands will be played and Jorryt van Hoof appears to be the chip leader ahead of Rodrigo Seiji and Jean-Noel Thorel.
Emil Bise opened to 5,500 on the button and Juan Pardo three-bet to 23,500 in the small blind for Bise to call. The flop brought and a bet of 25,000 by Pardo claimed a late night pot.
The 2022 PokerStars European Poker Tour (EPT) Prague festival has officially commenced at the King's Casino Prague. Four tournaments were listed for the first day of the popular series in the Czech capital and the most expensive tournament was Event #3: €10,200 Mystery Bounty.
Upon completion of eight levels of 30 minutes each, a cash prize pool of €244,400 has been created thanks to 52 entries. The slightly bigger slice of €260,000 is allocated for the Mystery Bounty portion and all cash prizes are still up for grabs. The field was whittled down to 32 survivors.
Brazil's Rodrigo Seiji Sirichuk finished atop the leaderboard with a stack of 370,500, followed by Sam Greenwood (310,000), Jorryt van Hoof (293,500), Jamil Wakil (292,000) and Mark Hammond. Greenwood and Wakil were among the nine players who opted to take advantage of the single re-entry option and did so successfully as they finished inside the top five.
Top 10 Chip Counts After Day 1
Position
Player
Country
Chip Count
Big Blinds
1
Rodrigo Seiji
Brazil
370,500
124
2
Sam Greenwood
Canada
310,000
103
3
Jorryt van Hoof
Netherlands
293,500
98
4
Jamil Wakil
Canada
292,000
97
5
Mark Hammond
United Kingdom
269,000
90
6
Hwany Lee
South Korea
250,000
83
7
Stoyan Obreshkov
Bulgaria
212,500
71
8
Steve O'Dwyer
Ireland
208,500
70
9
Juan Pardo
Spain
208,000
69
10
Petr Svoboda
Czech Republic
204,000
68
Seiji was the first player to win an EPT Mystery Bounty tournament at this very venue earlier in 2022 during the rescheduled 2021 EPT Prague festival. He took down a €2,700 buy-in after coming out on top of a 655-entry strong field and will be aiming to add another PokerStars spadie trophy to his collection. Juan Pardo (208,000) and Jean-Noel Thorel (195,000) also advanced with healthy stacks and will aim to win the €10,200 buy-in version of this tournament for the second time in the fourth edition.
Among a slate of well-known high-stakes regulars to make it through Day 1 were also Steve O'Dwyer, recent WSOP Europe bracelet winner Orpen Kisacikoglu, Juha Helppi, Conor Beresford, Adrian Mateos, and Daniel Dvoress. Not as fortunate were Mike Watson, Gab Yong Kim, Motoyoshi Okamura, Dawid Smolka and Yasuhiro Waki as both ran out of chips once. Santhosh Suvarna and Ondrej Goetz were the only two players to exhaust two entries already and won't be eligible top buy into the tournament anymore.
Thailand's Phachara Wongwichit was also among the late casualties after he lost all but a single chip with a bluff against Hwany Lee. Waki was among the early chip leaders only to see his fortune turn around swiftly. Within two hands, Waki lost his entire stack to Greenwood when he first ran kings into aces and then couldn't beat trips queens of the Canadian.
2022 EPT Monte-Carlo Mystery Bounty winner Thorel joined the big stacks after earning two knockouts in very short succession. Especially the clash with Paul Newey was a memorable one when he spiked a very fortunate river to eliminate his opponent.
However, neither knockout for the French businessman was worth any cash prize yet as the drawings for the Mystery Bounty prizes only commence as of level 13 after the first break on Day 2. By then, the late registration will have closed by 1.30 pm local time in the main tournament room at King's Casino Prague.
The second and final day of the first High Roller event here at 2022 PokerStars EPT Prague gets underway at 12.30 pm local time. Two levels remain for players to join the action and the blinds recommence at 1,500-3,000 with a big blind ante of 3,000.
Stay tuned to find out right here on PokerNews who earns the biggest bounty prizes and a portion of the cash prize pool.