During the dinner break word - well a piece of paper actually - reached media row and on that particular piece of pulp was the prize pool for this poker tournament. So drumroll please...I can tell you that the winner of Eureka3 Bulgaria will, barring any deals, take home €93,000 or лв182,389 if you'd rather. Lose the final hand of the tournament and you'll still pocket a rather handsome €62,500. Anyone who makes the final table will sleep soundly the night before knowing that even if they should bust on the very first hand of the final table then they'll have €9,200 with which to drown their sorrows. And anyone who survives the bubble will have locked up at least €2,020 for their efforts.
Eureka3 Bulgaria Main Event prize pool:
1st. €93,000
2nd. €62,500
3rd. €38,400
4th. €29,800
5th. €22,750
6th. €16,180
7th. €12,160
8th. €9,200
9th-10th. €6,600
11th-12th. €5,560
13th-14th. €4,550
15-16th. €3,540
17th-24th. €3,030
25th-32nd. €2,630
33rd-40th. €2,320
41-48. €2,020
Tournament update:
During the break tournament staff did chip counts of everyone who was left in the event on Day 1B. So let's take a look at the chip leaders and the stacks of some of the notables left in.
The current top five are:
Ievgen Lozinskyi, Ukriane, 99,200 - The mysterious Ukranian has no live poker results as far as I can tell. What's more if you google his name then google only returns three results!
Nikolay Losev, Russia, 71,000 - The Russian has live results going back to 2006 and nearly $800,000 in live winnings so far. He has a number of impressive results including a 28th place in the 2008 WSOP Main Event, a sixth place finish in the 2011 WSOP $2,500 mixed Hold'em event and a 10th place finish at EPT Prague in 2010.
Nikolay Petrov, Bulgaria, 69,000 - He got a stack early and is still putting it to good use in his quest to score his first ever live cash.
Neil Raine, UK, 67,000 - I took a closer look at the British pro earlier as he's on a bit of a live heater right now. Looks like it's continuing here in Bulgaria, first a side event win and now a big stack in the main event.
Ivo Donev, Bulgaria, 65,000 - Despite the player list saying Donev is from Bulgaria, he's actually from Austria. And at the time of winning a WSOP bracelet in limit Omaha in 2000 he was number one on the Austrian all-time money list. With over $1,400,000 in lifetime earnings he's currently third on his countries all-time money list.
There's only a few minutes left in level seven, so blinds are about to go to 300-600 ante 75. There are 145 of 222 runners left in Day 1B and the average stack is 27,800.
All photos are copyright of Tomas Stacha