Shot Taking In Prague: My First EPT Main Event

Four years ago, poker was just an occasional hobby, but last year it felt like a fever dream.

In 2024, I won my first World Series of Poker Circuit ring and I even played in my first-ever WSOP main event, managing to reach day 3. After that, I decided it was time to tick off another bucket list item: a European Poker Tour main event.

My poker journey has been somewhat typical and somewhat atypical. I played sports at a high level my whole life and have a pair of math-based degrees. I would dabble around with home games and the occasional game of $1-$2 cash from the time I was 12 years old until 2020.

During the beginning of the pandemic, I was trapped in Medellin, Colombia, having just moved out of the US permanently in late 2019. I decided to invest about half of my liferoll in an online poker coaching course and a small bankroll online. I wanted to finally take the game seriously. Within a month or two, I was banging off four-figure scores with regularity and playing almost every day. It was my new passion and I was fully invested.

Fast forward to 2022, I went to Las Vegas for the first time and picked up my first live cash. I also had a chance encounter with a player that would get me involved in poker media for the 2022 WSOP.

By the end of the year, my feet were fully soaked as I had been thrown in the deep end by covering the WSOP, EPT Barcelona, an event in Cyprus, and WSOP Europe. I quit my job and fully involved myself in the poker and casino industries.

I moved to Brazil and became a full-time poker player in 2023. I was playing or studying 40-80 hours a week, putting in crazy volume, and working the occasional poker media gig.

The aggressive nature of Brazilian poker also allowed me to experience something that simply cannot be acquired through studying alone. My skill level went through the roof. At one point, I reached a final table in 10 consecutive series that I took part in.

It wasn’t all smooth sailing, however. I went through many downswings, struggled to initially break through the $20-30 buy-in level, and had a pretty rough WSOP this past summer in my first ‘full’ schedule. After my WSOP Circuit win, I went on a nasty live downswing with one cash in about 25 or 30 buy-ins. Such is variance!

These days poker is going well and my trophy case continues to grow. I’m currently based in Europe with my girlfriend, who is an up-and-coming player and poker influencer herself (CoinPoker’s ‘PocketPeg’), and back working in poker media. As a result, I get to talk about poker non-stop while also enjoying the European poker circuits for the first time. Which brings us to EPT Prague (possibly the last EPT Prague ever.)

I decided to take a shot, rework my schedule, and play in the main event. Sure, I would be playing fewer events overall as a result, but you only live once. My bankroll was looking a little fatter than usual, and I had a chance to live out a fantasy.

I arrived very late after flying in from New York. My laptop had mysteriously malfunctioned en route and I missed my connection, causing me to miss the player party that PokerStars throws at every stop, and also one of the main event satellites. Needless to say, I wasn’t running very well before I played a single hand.

I then hopped into a main event satellite in hopes of locking up a second bullet and/or playing at a huge discount, but I didn’t get the job done. So, it was time to go back to my room, get some sleep, and prepare for the second-biggest buy-in of my life.

To my surprise, I actually slept like a baby, and after breakfast and a nice 20-minute walk in the freezing rain, I arrived at the poker room and sat down about halfway through the start of level 1. Fortunately, I didn’t recognize anyone at the table, which I was really expecting considering that I’ve covered poker tournaments for over two-and-a-half years and know virtually every big name.

On my first deal, before I could even get comfortable or take a real look around, I found myself in a pretty juicy pot.

Playing exactly 300 big blinds deep with the blinds at 100-100, I looked down at Q2 in the big blind. The cutoff opened to 300 and I had an easy defend with my suited combo. The flop was 643.

While it would appear that this board slams my range, the big blind and cutoff share a ton of equity. Since I have a chance to bloat this pot and potentially make a big hand, I opted to dig into my Brazilian playbook and lead for a third of the pot (300 into 800) with my queen-high flush draw and gutshot straight draw.

My opponent, who had a rather aggressive demeanor, raised to 1,000. Since I was playing super-deep and had so much equity, I thought about three-betting to 3,000-4,000 but made the call instead.

The issue with three-betting here is that I rarely get anything that currently beats me to fold. I’d still be a 45-55% underdog against a naked overpair and a 33-67% dog against a set, so bloating the pot could be potentially fatal against a sticky player if I don’t hit.

It’s my first hand, I have absolutely no information whatsoever, and I’m not trying to flip for my tournament life if my opponent decides to go nuts and four-bet jam me. I also could be against a better flush draw like A6 and have as little as 18% equity. So I call and go to the turn with 28 big blinds already in the middle.

The turn brought the 7, bringing in my flush, while also giving a straight to any 5-X combo. This is a spot where I considered making the rare double lead since the equities shift a ton in my favor. In fact, GTO Wizard likes making this play over 42% of the time.

But my opponent looked very interested in this card, so I decided to check it to him this time. The villain here should be pretty polar, either betting big or checking. He put 2,000 into the 2,800-chip pot.

In the moment, calling seemed to be the play, but then I remembered I was playing 300 big blinds deep! Based on how my opponent was acting, he didn’t seem as if he was solid and he may call a bit lighter than most or get married to a five, so I raised to 5,700. Against a solid opponent, or if I’m playing shallower, I’m almost certainly calling in this spot. He went into the tank for a solid three minutes, however, and ended up finding the fold.

Unfortunately, the rungood would come to an end rather quickly and by the time I got to the middle of level 2, I was down to 21,000 after coming out on the losing side of many one and two-street pots. But my luck was about to change for the better.

The same player opened to 500 from the cutoff, playing slightly shallower than me. I defended Q9 from the big blind.

In layman’s terms, I knew that the villain probably flopped a very strong hand, and if I hit, I was going to get PAID.

The turn brought in the 10, giving me the second-nut straight and putting a second diamond on the board. BOOM! This is exactly what I wanted and now I’m going for blood.

On this super-wet, high-card board, I expected him to have a lot of big bets, but he decided to bet 1,000 into 3,100. I’ve seen this player three-bet post-flop with big hands and wanted to give him enough rope to hang himself, so I raised to 3,000.

I probably could have and should have gone much, much larger. He ended up making the three-bet that I foresaw, bumping it up to 8,000, which was almost half his remaining stack.

If he somehow has A-Q here, it’s GG for us, but that’s just the way poker is sometimes. I put my stack in and he snap called. Fortunately, he had K-J for a flopped two pair. This was virtually the best-case scenario as he was drawing to four outs.

The river was the 3 and I went from 21,000 to 41,000 while our opponent hit the showers. Other players tapped the table with approval, and though I was stoic on the outside, I was absolutely buzzing on the inside.

I finished the level with 45,600 but I would falter again later, dwindling down to 33,500 by the end of level 4. At one point, I fell as low as 11,000 at 300-600. I won with pocket kings against pocket eights blind-on-blind last hand before dinner to chip up to 23,200 coming back to 400-800.

Former world no. 1 online pro Simon Mattsson would join the table a short time later and, though he looked familiar, I couldn’t put my finger on who he was until after the two of us got involved in a hand together. I ended up pulling off a huge bluff against him and it wasn’t until after I was raking the chips in that I saw his nametag and let out a big internal ‘HOLY SHIT!’ and vowed that I probably shouldn’t do much more of that. Luckily, he was dispatched shortly afterward, and I continued my slow and steady heater.

I was feeling pretty good heading into the last two hours of the night with 48,600 at 600-1,200, but about 30 minutes later, my main event run came to a sudden end thanks to a combination of a likely mistake and a cooler.

I opened K6 off of roughly 40 big blinds from the cutoff. The button, the small blind, and the big blind all called, which I wasn’t a fan of.

The flop came Q53, giving me a backdoor flush draw and a backdoor straight draw. Though action checked around, a fellow pro suggested that this is a nice hand to c-bet 20 percent. To paraphrase their advice, it’s cheap, people overfold to c-bets multi-way, and people under check-raise. That may not be the case in an EPT main, but I’d still imagine it’s true. On top of that, if a player check-raises here, it’s an easy fold and I can move on to the next hand.

The turn brought the 10, giving me the second-nut flush draw. The big blind, who I believed to be a very good player, bet 7 big blinds into 9.4 big blinds. He was capable of all sorts of bluffs, though I was already very wary of his suspiciously large sizing.

I thought his value hands looked like Q-J, Q-10, 5-5, 3-3, some K-Q, and some 5-3. I thought his bluff range was going to be some spades, 6-4, 4-2, maybe mixing in some 7-6, 9-8, and maybe some K-J and J-9 that he didn’t jam pre.

I was about 80% of the way to chucking my hand into the muck when I began to think I could be good much of the time against bluffs, and my king could be live.

In retrospect, when a player bets this large into three players, it’s almost always strong value, which means that I should have found the fold.

The same unnamed fellow pro also said, “Turn is a shitty spot, I think versus that sizing I’d probably just fold. Maybe you can call vs. half-pot but you could be vs. the nut-flush draw or a pair plus a flush draw. I’d only call here if you think you’re ahead at some small frequency.”

I ended up making the call, with both the button and the small blind folding.

The river was the 3, bringing in the backdoor flush and pairing the board. The big blind went into the tank for about two minutes before jamming about 30 big blinds effective into 23.4 big blinds.

My flush was essentially a bluff-catcher and I thought about getting away for a bit, but I knew that all of his bluffs and potential worse flushes would take the same line. I ended up flicking in the call and he turned over 5-3 offsuit, no spade, forcing me to the rail.

I spoke to a few different high-level pros about this hand, who had differing opinions about the line. Some believed that I played the hand perfectly. Others believe I had many chances to get away. A few had opinions that were right in the middle. That’s the beauty of poker, right?

Looking back on my bustout hand, I think that a c-bet on the flop allows me to get the information one way or the other. I either get to fold to a raise or potentially pot control to the river, where I only lose probably about 20-25% of my stack instead of being felted. Multi-way pots suck and in major tournament events like the EPT, there’s not going to be as much multi-way bluffing on day 1s as there may be in other events.

I ended up cashing the €1,100 side event the next day, essentially blinding out at the end from 20 bigs and bagging up with 4.5 big blinds. Nevertheless, I brought that tiny stack into day 2 and made a real run at the spadey (EPT Trophy), at one point getting back to nearly 20 big blinds.

Unfortunately, with 38 players left from the 522-player field, I shoved pocket eights from the cutoff into a lojack open and a hijack call. The lojack re-jammed with A-Q and hit their queen on the turn.

I got three pay jumps and ended up cashing for €2,460, getting my first EPT cash. I also soft-bubbled the 8-game and couldn’t get a stack going in either of my €1,650 mystery bounty bullets. I also entered the €330 event twice with no luck, giving me one cash in eight tournament entries. Certainly not the greatest showing but variance in eight tournaments is massive, so no regrets here.

Apart from the final hand I played in the main, I thought I more than held my own. I fought back and was resilient when my stack got low. I know I can play against the big boys and am looking forward to my next shot on the big stage.

Blaise Bourgeois a WSOP Circuit ring winner, poker journalist, and contributing columnist for Card Player. Find him on Twitter/X @BlaiseBourgeois.

*Photos by PokerStars – European Poker Tour

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