Casey Is The King Of The Kastle

Level 10: 500-1,000, 100 ante

The World Poker Tour (WPT) Prague Day 1b started with a rush of amazing excitment and ended in exactly the same way. We knew that Day 1b was going to be big but nobody was talking about it breaking any records. As people flowed through the floodgates, the organisers started to realise that the European WPT attendance record of 555 players (set by WPT Vienna in Season IX) was in real danger of being broken. Then as early as level 2 the Tournament Director grabbed the mic and told everyone that they were a part of history - WPT Prague was the new WPT European attendance record holder.

When the dust had finally settled our final number of attendees was 568, creating a prize pool of €1,753,200. This generated a first prize of €450,000 (and a $25k seat at WPT Bellagio) and if we were handing out that prize to the Day 1b chip leader it would be heading back to Slovenia in the suitcase of one Casey Kastle.

Kastle had an extremely good day but nothing could have prepared him for the final few hands of the night. Kastle was content with his days work and he had already begun to pack his things. The chip hoover that is Michael Tureniec had just been moved to his table and the legs had started to wobble. Tureniec is an absolute poker monster. The Swede had sat patiently all day long with nothing more than a mere morsel of a chip stack and then suddenly he was hauling 280,000 chips over to Kastle's table. You would think the two of them would want to stay out of each others way, have a beer and go to bed with a big smile on their faces…they had other ideas! In what we believe was a six-bet pot Casey Kastle moved all-in for 170,000 chips holding a pair of aces and Michael Tureniec called with a pair of queens. Kastle moved up to 356,800 and Tureniec was knocked down to 100,000.

124 players found themselves trailing in the vapour of the Kastle and combined with the 93 who got through yesterday we will be covering 218 players when Day 2 kicks off at 14.00 (CET). With a final table set for Monday we are going to have to get busy to chop this field down to a manageable size!

Other notables through to Day 2 include Steve O'Dwyer, Mike McDonald, Martins Adeniya and Eugene Katchalov while those that bit the dust include Roberto Romanello, Melanie Weisner, Marvin Rettenmaier and Martin Jacobson.

Here are the unofficial top five from the end of Day 1b:

1. Casey Kastle - 356,800
2. Nikolai Sears - 262,800
3. Karen Sarkisyan - 252,100
4. Steve O'Dwyer - 241,000
5. Martins Adeniya - 203,000