The first series of the brand-new PokerStars Open took place in Campione, Italy, and players from every corner of Europe showed up for their chance at six-figure pay-outs and the hardware.
Adrian Slate, a professional player from Romania, was the big winner of the series. Slate, who has close to $2 million in tournament cashes, won the €1,100 headliner that had a €1 million guarantee. The promise was easily smashed by 1,423 players who collectively rebought 1,000 times to push the prize pool up over €2.3 million.
Slate took the lion’s share — €363,000 ($395,515), which was the best score of his life.
Italy’s Giorgio Soceanu also bipped a career-best with the €225,200 ($245,372) that came with second-place, as did countryman Barnaba Perone, who won €160,880 ($175,291) for third. Perone’s best cash before that was $1,970 for an 18th-place finish in a $250 event at Remida Deep by Euro Rounders in 2023.
Soceanu beat his best cash by nearly 10-fold, as well.
In all, the top 315 players were paid at least $1,950 with only one American in that group, Terrance Reid, who finished 36th for $6,897.
Two ‘high rollers’ crowned
The other six-figure winners of the first PSO series were Sweden’s Alexander Ivarsson and Iceland’s Arni Gunnarsson.
Gunnarsson was the winner of the first of two “high roller” events, a €2,200 contest that saw 255 players (99 rebuys) generate a prize pool of €679,680 ($736,749). He hit the cages with a slip worth €134,560 ($145,858).
Austria’s Adi Rajkovic won his lifetime tournament best for finishing second, which was good for €84,060 ($91,118), while Spain’s Gerard Rubiralta Cortes crested the half-milly mark with a third place finish worth €60,040 ($65,081).
Sweden’s Alexander Ivarsson took down the €5,000 PokerStars Open Super High Roller event for €128,522. The event saw 85 players and 23 re-entries who played for a prize pool worth €492,372 ($535,135).
It was his second-highest score behind the $555,689 he won in 2019 by becoming the European Poker Tour Barcelona’s champion. He has $1.5 million in lifetime tournament winnings.
In December, England’s Paul Adrian Runcan won €900,000 ($951,142) for a second-place finish in the €5,000 buy-in event at EPT Prague — his largest score by a metric ton. He got his second-best for another second-place finish in Italy, winning €83,000 ($90,209).
Rounding out the top three was Ireland’s Conor Bergin, who also won a life-time best of €59,250 ($64,396) for finishing third.
Bergin may not have any six-figure scores yet, but his tournament poker career is trending upwards. His top five tournament cashes all happened since the beginning of December, and he came close to a big score in January by making the final table of the $10,000 event at the Lucky Hearts Poker Open, where he finished fifth for $48,100 (first was worth $179,260).
Put this man on your poker radar.
The PokerStars Open replaces all the online poker site’s regional European series, putting the Eureka Poker Tour, the France Poker Series (FPS), the UK & Ireland Poker Tour (UKIPT), and Estrellas in Spain under one umbrella called the PSO.
The next stop is at the Royal Dublin Society in Ireland April 10-21, for the Irish Open. After that, it hits Namur: Circus Casino Resort in Belgium May 28 to June 9.
