At 5 a.m. last night, Katchalov chopped the King's High Roller and banked €50,972. The Ukranian superstar decided to sleep in a little longer than Vladimir Troyanovskiy, but has arrived as well now.
What were you doing at 4:30am this morning? Chances are you were tucked up between the sheets, with the soothing sounds of poker chip ruffling quietly still playing on the stereo hours after it helped you doze off.
For two of Eastern Europe's biggest poker stars, 4:30am looked a little different. At around 2am in Rozvadov, Russia's Vladimir Troyanovskiy and Ukraine's Eugene Katchalov found themselves heads up in the €5,300 King's High Roller - the largest buy-in event of this PokerStars Festival.
A substantial pot was already brewing between Lukasz Ratajczyk and Jan Kot on a board on . Ratajczyk bet 4,900, Kot raised to 11,000 and Ratajczyk called it off.
Kot showed for the nut flush and took down the pot.
Oscar Anjou won the first big hand of the day with pocket kings and once again found himself with cowboys in the hole. With a completed board of , Anjou bet 15,000 and his opponent Petr Setka snap-called.
Anjou tabled his set of kings and Setka open-folded for the lower set. The Swede is up to 60,000, Setka slipped to 7,000.
"Can you please register me for Day 1d tomorrow? I already busted", said Martin Kabrhel, after he ran out of chips in the second level of the day. After quickly slipping below his starting stack, Kabrhel was very active and flung his stack in multiple times already to get the chips back.
It ended when Mario Tiedmann looked up one of Kabrhel's shoves. The Czech pro had a legitimate hand with but was flipping against Tiedmann's . The board ran out and that was it for Kabrhel. He will be back tomorrow night for the Day 1d turbo reentry.