The players haven’t started their winter sleep yet, they battle day in, day out in the PokerStars Championship. Igor Kurganov took down the €25,000 Single-Day High Roller II, while Kalidou Sow and Jason Wheeler are leading the final table of the Main Event with 6 players left.
Igor with fellow poker pro and girlfriend Liv Boeree
As we reported earlier, Albert Draher and Timothy Adams can already brag about a high roller win from Prague and now Team PokerStars pro, Igor Kurganov joins the elite club. Igor managed to outsmart 51 opponents, which earned him €371,250. The final table was full of top players such as Erik Seidel (7th, €67,000) or Stephen Chidwick (4th, €140,000). Igor and runner-up JC Alvarado made a deal to guarantee €319k for Alvarado, while €321k for Kurganov and they played for the trophy and €50,000. Igor managed to come out on top after hitting his gut-shot straight on the river in the final hand.
JC Alvarado: :Tc :7h
Igor Kurganov: :Ah :4d
Board: :7d :3h :2c :Ts :5s
Final results
| Place |
Name | Prize |
| 1 |
Igor Kurganov | €371,250 |
| 2 | Juan Carlos Alvarado | €319,750 |
| 3 | Christopher Kruk | €185,000 |
| 4 | Stephen Chidwick | €140,000 |
| 5 | Thomas Mühlöcker | €108,000 |
| 6 | Vladimir Troyanovskiy | €83,000 |
PLO specialists also sat down to play as both the €10,300 and the €1,100 events started on Thursday. Sweden’s Niklas Astedt took down the bigger tournament for €81,600 while Hungarian pro, Zoltan Gal won the €1,100 event for €44,800.
Plo champs Zoltan Gal and Niklas Astedt
Meanwhile, the original field of 855 reduced to six in the €5,300 Main Event. Frenchman, Kalidou Sow is the chip leader with 8,135,000 followed extremely closely by US’ Jason Wheeler, who has 8,100,000. The average stack on the final table is 4,275,000 and the blinds are 40,000/80,000-10,000. Michal Mrakes is third in chips with 5 million, but the other three all need to double up soon since they sit on pretty short stacks.
| Rank |
Name | Chips |
| 1 | Kalidou Sow | 8,135,000 |
| 2 | Jason Wheeler | 8,100,000 |
| 3 | Michal Mrakes | 5,010,000 |
| 4 | Gabriele Lepore | 1,815,000 |
| 5 | Colin Robinson | 1,425,000 |
| 6 | Harry Lodge | 1,230,000 |
The action continues at 1 pm local time, so make sure to keep on eye on Pokergurublog for the updates.
