Menikos Panagiotou Wins Eureka Season 2 finale in Prague
Player Menikos Panagiotou from Cyprus has won Eureka Prague, the final event of the second Season of the Eureka Poker Tour. He won €137,100 prize after beating a record field of 651 other players at the Hilton Prague Hotel in the Czech capital, December 5-9, 2012.
Panagiotou, a 29-year-old from Cyprus helps his father run a family import-export business. He started the final table 3rd in chips and literally destroyed his adversaries, eliminating six of his seven opponents to claim his biggest win to date. By the time he reached heads-up against Croatia’s Robert Vukovic, he had a near 5:1 chip lead. Not long into heads-up the first all-in confrontation occurred and Panagiotou emerged victorious. "My friends helped, psychologically for sure," he said afterwards, referring to his loyal and very vocal supporters on the rail.
The final featured 8 players from 8 different countries. First out was Dutch player Marcel Buissink, followed by Romanian Bogdan Ionescu in 7th place. 40-year old Polish player Mariusz Klosinski exited in 6th place, oldest finalist Bernd Vogelhuber (47, from Germany) finished 5th, while PokerStars Qualifier Ioannis Triantafyllakis from Greece and Matias Knaapinen from Finland departed in 4th and 3rd respectively.
The second season of the Eureka Poker Tour is now over and Eureka 2 Croatia champion Alija Filipovic's 39th place finish in Prague was enough for him to secure first place on the tour’s leader board. He has already used his first place prize of an EPT Main event seat to play in the EPT in Prague. Unfortunately, he was knocked out by Team PokerStars Pro Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier on Day 2.
The final Eureka event was held as a part of the EPT Prague Poker Festival and it has broken all records – the main event hosted almost twice as many players as ever before (previous record was 329 in Season 1, also in Prague). The High roller event attracted 195 players, which is almost five times as much from the previous record (40 in Riga, Latvia). All other side events were sold out with players waiting in queues to get an alternate seat. Another record is a total of 53 nationalities that took part in the event. 64 Russians, 49 Romanians, 46 Poles, 40 Germans and 40 from host country Czech Republic competed, along with several players from United Kingdom, Greece, France and Lithuania. 158 out of 652 participants won their seats online via PokerStars satellites.
The Eureka Poker Tour will continue in March 2013 when Season 3 gets underway in Rozvadov, another famous Czech poker destination. The event is scheduled for 18-24 March. Summer is again reserved for the beautiful Golden Sands resort near Varna, where Eureka Bulgaria will be held 22-28 July. This time next year the tour will also return to Prague.
Source: www.pokerstars.com
