2023 WSOP Europe Sets New Record as Neugebauer Wins Main Event
The World Series of Poker Europe is usually the last chance to win a WSOP bracelet each year. That is not so this year, as WSOP Paradise will make its debut with fifteen gold bracelet events December 3-15 in the Bahamas.
With so much focus on the inaugural WSOP Paradise, WSOP Europe seemed to garner less attention this year. But it’s important to record the 15 bracelet winners, none of which were American, as the series is, in fact, the WORLD Series of Poker.
WSOPE Makes History
For another year, King’s Casino hosted the WSOP Europe in Rozvadov, Czech Republic (Czechia). The 15 gold bracelet events ran October 25 through November 15 with $15M in prize pool guarantees.
All in all, the series attracted significant numbers, but it was the Main Event that set record attendance for that centerpiece of WSOP Europe. That piece of history takes its place next to the 2023 WSOP Main Event in Las Vegas, which set a record, as did the WSOP Online Main Event on GGPoker.
It has been a banner year for the World Series, and the WSOP Europe was a part of that success.
WSOP Europe Results
This is a list of the results, featuring the number of entries and final prize pool for each tournament:
- €350 NLHE Opener: 3,503 entries / €1,048,272 prize pool (€1M GTD) / Lukas Pazma of Slovakia won for €120,350
- €550 PLO 8-Max: 719 entries / €341,925 pool (€300K GTD) / Omar Eljach of Sweden won for €65,900
- €1,350 NLHE Mini Main Event: 1,729 entries / €1,971,060 pool (€28,940 overlay from €2M GTD) / Sokratis Linaras of Greece won for €310,350
- €2K PLO: 206 entries / €362,045 pool (€300K GTD) / Hokyiu Lee of Hong Kong won for €91,183
- €550 NLHE Colossus: 3,436 entries / €1,632,100 pool (€1.5M GTD) / Ermanno Di Nocola of Italy won for €210,350
- €5K PLO: 202 entries / €911,525 pool (€500K GTD) / Wing Po Liu of Hong Kong won for €230,000
- €1,650 NLHE 6-Max: 495 entries / €705,375 pool (€300K GTD) / Tobias Peters of Netherlands won for €143,100
- €25K NLHE GGMillion$: 89 entries / €2,079,930 pool (€1M GTD) / Daniel Dvoress of Canada won for €600,000
- €1,100 NLHE Mystery Bounty: 803 entries / €705,375 pool (€300K GTD) / Tobias Garp of Sweden won for €92,300
- €2K 8-Game Mix: 97 entries / €170,477 pool (€100K GTD) / Dainius Antanaitis of Lithuania won for €47,770
- €1,100 NLHE Turbo Bounty: 570 entries / €370,500 pool (€ 300K GTD) / Joakim Andersson of Sweden won for €70,000
- €50K NLHE Diamond High Roller: 34 entries / €1,598,850 pool (€1M GTD) / Santhosh Suvarna of India won for €650,000
- €10,350 NLHE Main Event: 817 entries / €7,761,500 pool (€5M GTD) / Max Neugebauer of Austria won for €1.5M
- €1K NLHE Turbo Freezeout: 182 entries / €200,000 pool (€10K overlay from €200K GTD) / Berndt Gleissner of Germany won for €46,700
- €550 NLHE Closer: 628 entries / €298,300 pool (€200K GTD) / Maurice Nass of Germany won for €60,000
As shown, there were two tournaments that missed their guarantees, but several others more than made up for that by far surpassing their promised prize pools.
Neugebauer’s Journey to Victory
Austrian 26-year-old poker pro Max Neugebauer was one of hundreds of players who entered the WSOP Europe Main Event. He played Day 1A and this was the beginning of his journey.
- Day 1A: finished with 113,100 chips (chipleader Dumitru Pora had 729,700)
- Day 2: soared to the top of the leaderboard and finished the day fourth in chips with 1,180,000
- Day 3: finished 21st of 35 survivors with 1,725,000 chips
- Day 4: made final table third of eight with 10,325,000 chips (Eric Tsai le with 23,650,000)
Neugebauer started the final day of play in good position and took a few chips from Tsai to get started. He lost some ground to Michele Tocci and Nils Pudel, however, and fell below 8M chips.
Then, the comeback began. Neugebauer doubled through chipleader Tocci and took more from him later in some entanglements. And in a massive pot against Tsai, Neugebauer took a massive pot to soar into the chip lead. He then busted Kasparas Klezys in fourth place. After Tocci departed in third place, Neugebauer took 64.1M chips into heads-up play against the 17.4M of Tsai.
Though Tsai came out swinging, Neugebauer had a lead too large to overcome. Tsai finally pushed all-in with J-9 of diamonds on a Q-8-7-A-4 board with two diamonds. Neugebauer called with J-8 and won the tournament.
Neugebauer spoke after his win. “It means a lot. I mean, the bracelet itself means a lot. … What means most to be, honestly, is my friends being here and cheering me on. It was really wonderful.”
