Leon Tsoukernik Wins 2016 EPT Prague €50,000 Super High Roller

Leon Tsoukernik has won the 2016 European Poker Tour Prague €50,000 no-limit hold’em super high roller event. The 43-year-old topped a field of 49 entries in this event to win €741,100 ($787,530 USD) and his first major live tournament title.

The 2016 EPT Prague is the last festival ever to be held under the EPT banner, as the tour will be rebranding in 2017 to become PokerStars Global Championship events. The EPT will combine some of it’s largest series with the most popular stops from some of PokerStars’ other popular tours like the Latin American Poker Tour. That means that
Tsoukernik will go down in history as the last EPT super high roller champion in history.

Tsoukernik is not a poker pro, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t had a big impact on the game in recent years. In 2014 he won the Industry Person of the Year Award at the European Poker Awards for his work in expanding the game of poker through his efforts at King’s Casino in the Czech Republic, the casino that he built in Rozvadov, along the Czech-German border, that is now one of the largest in Europe.

Although this is his first major tournament title, he regularly participates in high stakes cash games. Tsoukernik needed that experience in order to overcome a tough final table that included runner-up Charlie Carrel (2nd – $568,783), Juha Helppi (3rd – $362,523) and 2015 Card Player Player of the Year winner Anthony Zinno (7th – $131,259).

Tsoukernik came into the final day as the chip leader with 4,330,000 of the roughly 12.25 million chips in play, good for 87 big blinds. It took only 127 hands to narrow the field from six players down to one. Tsoukernik’s elimination of Helppi in third place set up a heads-up battle with British pro Charlie Carrel. Tsoukernik began with a 3-to-1 chip lead and never looked back.

On the final hand Carrel moved all in for just over ten big blinds from the button and Tsoukernik made the call with the KJ. He was dominated by Carrel’s AK but caught up in a hurry with a flop of J65. The 5 turn and K river kept Tsoukernik ahead, securing the pot and the title for him while sending Carrel to the rail in second place.

Here is a look at the payouts and POY points awarded in this event:

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