It was a hectic first day of the 2025 Festival Rozvadov, and arguably, the €150 Hendon Mob Championship (THMC) was the center of attention. The Festival is swinging big and aiming for this tournament to be the biggest THMC event ever. Believe it or not, but the guarantee has never been as high as €300,000 before, and the buy-in has also reached a new low (€150).
On top of that, there are quite a few added rewards as well; the top two stacks from each starting flight receive a €550 Festival Main Event ticket each, and the one who wins the entire tournament will also receive a package to THMC Cape Town Million, roughly valued at €2,000.
Day 1b may have been the flight of the day that attracted the most entries, however, the poker.pro live reporting had its sole focus on Day 1b. Let’s take a quick sweep and see what went down in the first on-site flight of the €150 THMC Championship.
Decent Numbers to Start Things Off
Overall, 227 entries were made in Day 1a, which meant that 29 players would advance to Day 2 (which will be played June 8). Compare that with the first remote flight that ran in Prague, where nine players bagged.
Day 1a commenced at 13:00, after Martin “Franke” von Zweigbergk and Roland Boothby held a short welcome speech to all players. About an hour later, the €30 satellite with 20 guaranteed tickets finished; the number of entries in the tournament was increasing at a rapid speed.
Play went on; the window for late registration and re-entry closed after Level 10. At this point, Achim Prinzing was most likely the tournament chip leader. When poker.pro commenced chip counts at the end of Level 12, Prinzing was still on top of the leaderboards.
Rounding Things Up
After what would prove to be the last break of the day, 38 players remained, meaning nine more would go out before the remaining warriors would “bag N’ tag”. At this point, Stylianos Papantoniou held the chip lead, while Prinzing had lost some big pots.
From this stage onwards, things escalated very quickly. In fact, when the floor was about to announce hand-for-hand play, there was already one showdown happening at one of the tables. The bust of Dieter Bauer meant that bubble play would be skipped entirely, and that the remaining 29 players were in the money.
While the chip counts are not yet ready to be revealed, it’s no secret that Adrijan Bat and Suren Saiian finished as the top two stacks. That means that they both will receive a €550 ticket for The Festival Main Event.
As soon as possible, poker.pro will be back with full chip counts from Day 1a (and all other starting flights, for that matter). Tomorrow, the live reporting will commence at 11:00, following all the action from Day 1c.
