The Festival, First Stop Bratislava

The first event in The Festival Series in Bratislava saw a week of jammed packed events available 24/7 at the Banco Casino, with poker tournaments, blackjack and roulette tournaments, competitive sports betting.

Incase you missed the action here’s a recap on what went down:

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€300k Guaranteed Main Event

The €300,000 GTD Main Event with a buy-in of €550 saw 621 entrants which just covered the guaranteed prize pool (covered in conjunction with the Banco Casino). This was a brave amount to set not only for an inaugural event, but also after a hard hitting year on live poker events with many tournaments being cancelled due to Covid. However, the guarantee was reached with 621 runners over 4 starting flights.

A total of 71 places were paid, and a nearly all- Austrian final table. The top 3 runners struck a deal awarding almost €60k to the winner.

The first ever Festival champion winner Martin Mauthner nicknamed “The Austrian Sammy Farha” has been part of the poker scene since starting out as a Poker dealer at European Poker Tours (EPT Pokerstars Live), then changing into the filed of a recreational player.
Winning The Festival’s first event and taking home his biggest win to date, has definitely made him a poker player to look out for.

Final Table Results:

Buy-In: €550
Entries: 621
Prize Pool: €304,245

A Few Words From the Winner of The Festival Series Martin Mauthner, “The Austrian Sammy Farha”.

Entertainment at The Roulette & Blackjack Tables

The Festival Series not only covered a variety of Poker tournaments & games, but also offered up a Blackjack and a Roulette tournament.

Highlighting the Roulette Tournament, which took place later on in the evening and included free beer, which made for an extremely entertaining event, with a total of 34 participants battling it out for the €7,000 plus prize pool.
After hours of fun Poker Pro and Twitch Streamer Tommi Heimonen took the €2.5k home and was crowned the winner.

Festival Founder Wins in Threes!

Not only were the table game fans looked after during the event, but a brand new addition to the Festival series were 3 Sports betting tournaments, each with their own categories:

Freeroll, Lowroller (€35 buy-in) and Highroller (€250 buy-in).

How did it work? The aim of the game was to out-bet your opponent during several live sports events being shown on the day.

And the winner of all 3 sporting events? None other than the founder of the Festival, Martin “Franke” von Zweigbergk.

A Variety of Sides Events For All Types of Players.

The Festival hosted a great mixture of side events, which ran daily at the Casino. With so many variants to choose from like, Drawmaha (or Sviten Special), Open-Face-Chinese, Heads-Up, and multiple PLO-events, it truly satisfied the most avid recreational poker players and Pros alike.

The biggest of all side events was our very own €220 PokerListings Deepstack event attracting194 entrants paying out over €36,000k prize money.

British poker doyen JJ Hazan took home the win and also added to live commentary during the series.

And If That Wasn’t Enough…

When they say “Festival” they mean they’ve got it all covered. So, not only a week-long of action packed schedule of poker, casino table events and live sports betting tournaments, the players also had time to enjoy the scenery and the fine things Bratislava had to offer.

During the start of the event, package holders enjoyed a pool tournament held at a nearby billiard club, dinner accompanied by wine tasting, followed by a cabaret at a local club.

Looking to the Future

With the first Festival Series event being a great success, we’re looking forward to the announcement of the next stop in the series. Where and when this will be is still too early to say.

Watch this space!

Here’s a few words from Tournament director Gerard Serra on his thoughts on The Festival Series: