The Festival Series Bratislava 2024 – Side Events Galore!

The Banco Casino in Bratislava hosted yet again an edition of The Festival Series a couple weeks ago. With over 50+ unique tournament on the schedule, it was a certainty that every type of player would find their own preferred tournaments in multitude. With this article, we are going to look back on everything that went on throughout this amazing ‘Mixed Games’ live poker series.

Where usually the stop in Bratislava consists out of 8 days, the organisation had to reduce it this time to 7 days. Where the days were reduced with one, you would automatically think there would be less tournaments available, but the opposite is true. With over 50+ tournaments, the cash game challenge, several casino games tournaments, and the one-hand Flip and Go games on the schedule, the fireworks would be launched into the air straight from the get-go.

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Lars Hole Wins Newly Introduced Tournament

The Festival Series is never afraid of making spontaneous decisions and this time a total of two new tournaments would make its debut on the tournament schedule. Where the U25-tournament unfortunately didn’t find enough players before it seeing to be cancelled, it was the Pot-Limit Razz Progressive Knockout tournament which stole all the spotlights on the first day of the event.

With a mere buy-in of €125 players could enjoy a great mixed games format which is easily to follow for the natural hold’em players as well. It’s perhaps one of the easiest formats in poker to get familiar with, although it’s an art to stay out on top in this discipline. With the progressive knockout feature enabled, The Festival crew tried to enhance even more players towards this tournament. Eventually a total of 80 entries were made and it was Norwegian Lars Hole who managed to bag the victory in this event for €1,010 and for sure a lot in bounties on top of that. Giorgio Savignone, all the way from Italy, managed to get the same cash prize as Hole, but sadly wouldn’t make it to keep his own bounty. Scott ‘Pokerbrahs’ Kenyon from the UK, and well-known Twitch Streamer, had to settle for the Bronze medal and a worthy €680 in prize money, excluding bounties. (It was Scott Kenyon who eventually would take down the Player of the Series award by having the best results overall in the entire week!)

The Hendon Mob Championship

The Hendon Mob Championship has been part of The Festival Series ever since 2022, when the start of the collaboration between world’s largest poker database owner and The Festival Series got celebrated with it’s first tournament in… Bratislava! For the third consecutive year, The Hendon Mob Championship would be part of the event and this time bigger than ever before. With a total of three starting flights, a total of 436 entries were made, accumulating a total prize pool of €93,195. For the winner was a first prize reserved of €17,745 and an additional package to the grand final of The Hendon Mob Championship in Cape Town worth approximately €2,000.

After long hours of play, it would eventually be former 2011 November Niner Martin Staszko who would headline the final table. He wasn’t only a member of the final nine back then, he managed to finish in 2nd place during the Main Event which was won by Piusz Heinz. Where Staszko collected $5,433,086 back then, he was aiming for the title during this epic €250 multi day tournament.

Staszko, busting players right, left, front and center at this final table, had a commanding chiplead with three players remaining. It all looked super promising for the pro, until the moment he clashed with Norwegian Vegard Granli :

Staszko: Q K

Granli: A 10

After a 3-bet preflop from Granli, Staszko only made the call after calculating the stacks on the table, and both saw a flop of 10 8 J . It doesn’t take much logics to know that this would go in on the flop (check out this great odds calculator which helps you review your own gameplay!), and that’s exactly what happened. The A landed on the turn to give Staszko the better combination, but the 4 gave Granli the nut flush and the winning hand. From here onwards, Granli managed to maintain his chipcounts to a decent level.

While Hristo Dimitrov busted out of the tournament in 3rd place for €8,300, the battle was real between Granli and Staszko. After a long battle which costed the needed blood, sweat, and tears, it was Granli who eventually bested Staszko in the final heads-up, and made it happen that the trophy went to Norway this time! Another 2nd place for Staszko, which only is the second runner-up finish in his career of the Czech superstar if you add his runner-up in the WSOP Main Event to it.

Place	Player	Country	Prize Money
1	Vegard Granli		€17,745
2	Martin Staszko		€12,025
3	Hristo Dimitrov		€8,300
4	Vitaliy Kryza		€6,375
5	Jason Shellum		€5,125
6	Ronen Mordechai		€4,200
7	Ziga Klopcic		€3,325
8	Jan Erik Iversen		€2,450
9	David Vesely		€1,850

Watch the Full Final Table action of The Hendon Mob Championship Bratislava here:

The Festival Series – More Than Just Poker

Whoever knows is familiar with The Festival Series knows that the event is not just solely about poker tournaments, nor just the Main Event. While of course, the €550 Main Event is covering a guaranteed prize pool of €500,000, and multiple other tournaments having guaranteed prize pools, it’s not just these which are attracting players from all over the world. Hospitality events, side activities organized around the poker schedule, are available to whoever has qualified online through one of the many online operators connected to The Festival Series. Take for example Redstar, who had sent a fair amount of players on the plane to Bratislava, or Coolbet which is often the main supplier of players to the event, or any of the other operators making use of the iPoker network, all these online qualifiers could make use of the great hospitality events such as visiting the Escape Room, the Christmas Market, a lunch party in Hungary just across the border, Back to the Basics in the gaming room next door to Banco Casino, or what to think of the Player’s Party at Club Great in the heart of Bratislava, or a guided tour through the medieval city centre!

Not just the iPoker Network offers online qualifiers to the event, big brands such as Partypoker and Unibet also provide weekly tournaments online where players can buckle up themselves with a full package including hotel, merchandise, and a €550 Main Event buy-in. The Festival Series is perhaps one of the fewer live events in the world which has such an astronomic amount of online partners available, which basically cover Europe entirely and beyond.

After every single hospitality event, players had the option to enjoy free one-hand flips at the casino, rewarding multiple free tickets leading towards one of the casino games tournaments such as Blackjack, Roulette, and Slots. Great added value to a package which is already priceless due to all memories that come with it!

Side Event Action

With 50+ tournaments all included within one week of extreme poker action, dozens of side events would be played out. You’ve not seen so many different poker formats available ever before during a live event. Of course, when offering such a large variety of tournaments, you won’t have fields as big as on the European Poker Tour, but that’s not what The Festival Series stands for; They try to give players the real ‘home game’ vibe, by offering fun and entertaining formats, which are not played elsewhere. We have listed a couple of the tournaments below for you, so you get a bit of a view of what tournaments are being offered:

Tournament	Entries	Prize Pool	Winner	Country	1st Prize
Heads Up	32	€6,840	Jaroslaw Falkowski		€3,420
H.O.R.S.E	47	€4,911	Giorgio Savignone		€1,341
PLO High Roller	39	€37,050	Franke Von Zweigbergk		€14,300
Crazy Pineapple	83	€8,673	Johan Brauer		€2,423
PLO 4/5/6 Card	76	€16,245	Ylva Kim Thorsrud		€3,547
Sviten Special	77	€16,458	Aki Pyysing		€4,958
2-7 Triple Draw	60	€6,270	Barrie Dear		€1,920
NLH 15k GTD	166	€17,347	Majken Christensen		€3,572
Mystery Bounty (Excl. Bounties)	405	€45,562	Rotem Bar Noy		€7,492
OFC High Roller	17	€16,150	Scott Kenyon		€5,915
NLH High Roller	59	€56,050	David Vedral		€18,050
NLH PKO Late Night Madness	213	€12,140	Maksym Ronshyn		€1,820

The Festival Series €550 Main Event – €500,000 GTD

The Main Event of The Festival Series has been proven to be a catapult for many rising poker talents in the past. Michel Molenaar, who took down the 2022 Main Event for €126,550, is now travelling all over the world in the chase of more poker momentum. Young Polish player Gabriel Rymar, who not only took down the 2023 Main event for €80,000, but also the Deepstack Tournament for over €14,000, is also working his way up the ranks in tournament poker.

This year, the €550 Main Event already kicked off on the the second day of the series with the first out of six opening flights. Of course, despite all the lights being shed on the side activities and side events, the Main Event still offers a guaranteed prize pool of €500,000, which is always the aim to surpass. This time, they didn’t manage to cover it and it resulted in a minor overlay. However, it was that minor that the faces of everyone involved got covered with big smiles, mainly thanks to the late registration being open for the first two levels of Day 2. A whopping 131 entries were made in just 90 minutes of play, putting the total amount of entries up to a staggering 973 entries.

At Banco Casino Bratislava, it is mandatory that regardless the guarantee in a tournament, there will always be reduced a fee of 5% of the entire prize pool, which also happened this time. In the end, if you calculate it correctly, it would mean that the casino took €11,499 of the prize pool in theory. You wondering yourselves, why it’s such a strange amount with xx,499 on the end? Well, that’s because it’s The Festival Series! It had been decided that a symbolic €1 would be added to the eventual first prize, resulting in an astronomic €77,001 for the winner!

Final Day Action

With only 16 players returning for the final day of the Main Event, it was Dutchman Jaap Smits who was leading the pack towards the final table. With often a bit unorthodox plays with ‘loosy goosy 3-bets’ following the commentator of the live stream George Sandford, it was the Dutchman who own-handed made it happen that the final table would be over in no-time! He wasn’t afraid of colliding with other players, and it turned out very well for him in the end. However, there was one player who managed to stand ground against the rage of the Dutchman thus far as Sebastian Kotowicz, Polish regular of Banco Casino Bratislava, managed to stop the intercity coming from Den Bosch, The Netherlands. (Without any help of any external software or tools!)

Kotowicz, who had gathered roughly $290,000 in live tournament career earnings prior to this tournament, managed to take it all down in the final hand when his turned flush would overcome the turned two-pair of his opponent Smits. Check all the action of the final hand below:

Due to the victory of Sebastian Kotowicz in The Festival Series Main Event of Bratislava 2024, he kept the streak ongoing for his country Poland. As mentioned before, it was young countryman Gabriel Rymar who took down the event in the previous year, and it would keep the trophy in the hands of the great country that Poland is.

Place	Player	Country	Prize Money
1	Sebastian Kotowicz		€77,001
2	Jaap Smits		€53,100
3	Matus Gabzdil		€37,600
4	Andre Berg		€27,700
5	Halvor Dahlberg		€19,700
6	Cristian Bele		€14,600
7	Paul Minzariu		€11,300
8	David Kozma		€8,800
9	Ilya Smolko		€7,000

Future of The Festival Series

While the official communication still needs to come, The Festival Series already announced during the recent stop their schedule for next year in 2025. In terms of the live events there will be stops in Rozvadov (June), Malta (September), and Bratislava (November. But not all eyes are only set on the live events this time; With two online series planned to be held in 2025, The Festival Series tries to conquer the online poker industry as well alongside the iPoker Network. The first online series will be held in February/March on iPoker and houses a total series guarantee of over $2,000,000, and the online qualifiers for the live events will be launched as well in 2025!

Make sure to follow PokerListings and keep staying up to date about everything in regards of The Festival Series and it’s online qualifiers. If you would more specific information, please give the crew of The Festival Series a follow as well on Social Media.