Casino owner, antique dealer and recreational poker player Leon Tsoukernik of Czech Republic was crowned the winner of the EPT Prague €50,000 Super High Roller on Tuesday after having bested an extremely tough field consisting of many of the world's best tournament players, including poker prodigy Charlie Carrel heads-up. Carrel, 23, and Tsoukernik, 43, seem to have captivated all observers since they ended up at the same table for the first time on Sunday afternoon.
"Less than an hour into their acquaintance, they exchanged heated words over a misunderstanding over an alleged angle shoot. (There was no guilty party.) But since then they played almost non-stop against one another, earning each other's respect. Carrel knocked out Tsoukernik on Day 1, and Tsoukernik bought back in, landing in the exact seat he had left. Tsoukernik then paid €600 for a bottle of whisky and they buried the hatchet over the brown stuff," Howard Swains wrote on PokerStars Blog.
Carrel bagged up the chip lead at the end of Day 1, but Tsoukernik was ahead when Day 2 concluded. At around 5:30 pm on Tuesday (the final day of play), the old arch enemies played heads up for the title. Tsoukernik started with a 3-1 lead and took down a few decent-sized pots to accumulate more chips and extend the gap between them. Carrel was eventually at the stage when he needed to fold or move all in. In the final hand, just six hours after the final table started, Carrel shoved with ace-king and Tsoukernik called with king-jack.
Unfortunately for Carrell, the flop brought a jack-high and two of Tsoukernik's suit. The two remaining cards didn't help Carrell either and Tsoukernik was crowned the winner for €741,100! According to live poker database The Hendon Mob, Tsoukernik only had one previous cash worth €33k in 2011 before winning this tournament.
EPT13 Prague Super High Roller
Dates: December 11-13, 2016
Buy-in: €48,500 + €1500
Entries: 49 (39 unique players; 10 re-entries)
Total prize pool: €2,352,735
1 Leon Tsoukernik, Czech Republic, €741,100
2 Charlie Carrel, United Kingdom, €535,250
3 Juha Helppi, Finland, €341,150
4 Viacheslav Buldygin, Russia, €258,800
5 Paul Newey, United Kingdom, €200,000
6 Julian Thomas, Germany, €152,915
7 Anthony Zinno, United States, €123,520
sources: http://www.pokerstarsblog.com/en/blog/tournaments/ept/2016/ept13-prague-tsoukernik-is-the-king-land-164336.shtml & https://www.pokernews.com/news/2016/12/leon-tsoukernik-wins-pokerstars-ept-super-high-roller-prague-26582.htm