Amar Begovic Wins WSOP Circuit Rozvadov Main Event for €220,000
Amar Begovic has won the €1,650 WSOP International Circuit Rozvadov Main Event for €220,000 and his first WSOPC gold ring after seeing off a field of 796 players. He also wins himself a place in the $1m GTD 2018 WSOP Global Casino Championship held in August.
This is Begovic’s biggest score to date, besting the €10,910 he won way back in 2009 in the Sarajevo November Challenge Main Event. It also boosts the Bosnian into third place in Bosnia & Herzegovina's all-time money list. Begovic doubled up twice at the final table, before rivering a lucky river on his first chance to eliminate his opponent, to take down the title.
Runner-up Timur Margolin also has cause to celebrate, with this result being his biggest score in almost three years, since narrowly missing out on a bracelet at the 2015 World Series of Poker. He finished runner-up in Event #47: $2,500 No-Limit Hold’em for $341,338. Margolin also wins a $16,000 package to the partypoker LIVE MILLIONS Grand Final in Barcelona for being the last online qualifier standing.
Here are the final table results:
| Position | Player | Country | Payout (€) | Payout ($) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Amar Begovic | Bosnia & Herzegovina | €220,000 | $270,600 |
| 2 | Timur Margolin | Israel | €135,000 | $166,050 |
| 3 | Paris Stavridis | Greece | €97,000 | $119,310 |
| 4 | Martin Kabrhel | Czech Republic | €76,244 | $93,780 |
| 5 | Ben Zech | Germany | €59,766 | $73,512 |
| 6 | Grzegorz Wyraz | Poland | €46,960 | $57,761 |
| 7 | Florian Sarnow | Germany | €35,050 | $43,112 |
| 8 | Alexander Romme | Germany | €24,274 | $29,857 |
From the start of the Day 3, it looked like players and tournament staff were in for a long one. Eleven eliminations in the first level soon dispelled that preconception for a while, that was until just six headed out the door in the next two levels. Among those to bust early on Day 3 were Konstantinos Misailidis, whose elimination would boost Amir Begovic into the chip lead early, and [Removed:221] and Oleksandr Vikhtiuk, whose eliminations at the hand of Timur Margolin pushed his chip stack ever skyward.
Kabrhel's deuces got counterfeited on a double-paired board.
Yehuda Cohen and Dennis Kirsch were eliminated by Alexander Romme and Stanislav Koleno respectively, and the final two tables were set. The chip lead, which had changed between Begovic and Margolin all day, sat with Begovic, although the two players were the only ones over the three million mark.
On the feature table, Begovic would push forward to four and then five million, while those on the outer table toiled with double-ups for Florian Sarnow and Martin Kabrhel, among others. The last English player, Tom White was eliminated in 10th place, and the unofficial final table was set, still lead by Bosnian Begovic.
The short stack at the unofficial final table of nine was Omer Yoruk. He ran eights into queens to finish in 9th place. It took four hands for Alexander Romme to follow him out the door after failing to overcome the tens of Kabrhel. Kabrhel had now eliminated two players in a row but didn’t look like kicking on into the chip lead as he had done so in the High Roller.
Florian Sarnow was next to go, losing a flip to Timur Margolin who took over the chip lead, with a stack of over seven million. Grzegorz Wyras had struggled with a short stack all final table and was eliminated in sixth place, followed by Ben Zech who got it in with two pair, only to face a better two pair by opponent Margolin.
Margolin was building up steam, his chip stack in excess of ten million at this point, and he would extend that to twelve by the time Martin Kabrhel was eliminated in fourth place. Kabrhel ran deuces into the ace-king of Amar Begovic, with his pair getting counterfeited on a double-paired board.
This kept Begovic in touch with his Israeli opponent, and Begovic would subsequently move into the chip lead after some carefully placed river bets, and flop raises. However, it didn’t last long with Begovic three-bet folding with six-deuce suited to lose a million chips to Margolin and then bluffing off another two million when Margolin check-called three streets with top pair. This pushed Begovic down towards Paris Stavridis, who stuck around in three-handed play, and doubled up through Begovic to level out the stacks even more.
Stavridis would bust to Begovic to bring the tournament to heads-up play. Twice Margolin ground Begovic down and twice Begovic would hold to secure vital doubles. On the third all-in and call of heads-up play, Begovic conquered. He got it in with queen-four on a queen-high board with just the river to come. A second queen popped up, giving Begovic the title, the WSOPC ring, €220,000 in prize money, and a place at the 2018 WSOP Global Casino Championship to be held later this year at Harrah's Cherokee.
Based in the United Kingdom, Will started working for PokerNews as a freelance live reporter in 2015 and joined the full-time staff in 2019. He graduated from the University of Kent in 2017 with a B.A. in German. He also holds an NCTJ Diploma in Sports Journalism.
