Hirokazu Kobayashi raised to 2,500 as the first to act and Nozomu Shimizu put in a three-bet to 10,000 from the hijack.
The action folded back to Kobayashi, who quickly shoved, covering the stack of his fellow Japanese player.
A small sigh escaped from Shimizu before he put in a call for his tournament life.
Nozomu Shimizu: A?K?
Hirokazu Kobayashi: 8?8?
The flop remained clean for Kobayashi's eights, but the K? turn saw Shimizu hit the better pair. Kobayashi requested an eight, but the deck must have misheard as the A? came on the river instead.
Shimizu doubled up to one and a half starting stacks while Kobayashi dived a bit under one.
Motoyoshi Okamura made a min-raise of 2,000 from the cutoff before Steve O'Dywer made it 8,000 to go from the button. The blinds got out of the way before Okamura came over the top with a reraise to 17,500, which O'Dwyer called.
On the 2?A?9? flop, Okamura continued with a bet of 8,000. O'Dwyer spent little time before tossing his cards to the muck, surrendering the pot to Okamura.
The 2023 PokerStars European Poker Tour Prague festival is winding down and will see €10,200 No-Limit Hold'em kicking off this evening at 7 p.m. local time.
Originally scheduled as a €25,000 high roller, this will now be the fourth €10,000 buy-in of the series. The two-day event is expected to draw a medium-sized field with the previous event reaching 240 entries. The field is expected to have some of the world's most accomplished poker players, including Steve O'Dwyer, Parker Talbot, Antoine Saout, Ramon Colillas, and Conor Beresford, all of whom have been active this stop.
Should he take a seat today, Hungarian online grinder Tamas Adamszki will be after his third high roller title of the series after taking down the earlier €10,200 and €50,000 events back-to-back for €117,150 and €394,670. He isn't the only grinder looking for multiple titles this stop as Oleg Vasylchenko took down €10,200 Mystery Bounty just a few days ago, earning €154,673.
Tamas Adamszki
Players will begin the tournament with a starting stack of 100,000 chips and blinds of 500/1,000/1,000 with levels lasting 30 minutes and 15-minute breaks at various intervals. The event features a shot clock from the start and each new entry will receive four time bank cards. They'll play ten levels tonight before survivors bag and tag their chips for Day 2, which begins at noon local time Sunday.
Late registration in this unlimited reentry event will remain open until tomorrow, at which point the prize pool and payouts will be determined. Approximately 15 percent of the field will be paid and the event will play down to a winner on Day 2 on December 17th.
Stay tuned as thePokerNews live reporting team is on-site here at Hilton Prague to bring you updates on the high-roller action.
