Big Win for Eiler, Near Miss for Negreanu

As we reported earlier this week, Daniel Negreanu sat down for one of the most important games of his career yesterday. At stake was far more than the nearly $1 million top prize. If Negreanu could sweep the EPT Vienna Main Event, he would not only claim his first EPT title – one of the only major poker titles that continues to evade the top pro – he would also surpass Phil Ivey to take the top spot on the lifetime earnings list.

While Negreanu came to the final table of eight with a hefty chip lead and played well throughout the final day, he fell out of the action in fourth place. And while his €175,000 is nice to say the least, it’s not enough to dethrone Ivey, who will no doubt stay on top of the career earnings leaderboard for the rest of the year (if not indefinitely).

Negreanu’s turn for the worse came in the same hand that put Luca Cainelli out of the competition. All three players called all in. Cainelli held a seemingly magical pair of pocket rockets, but Negreanu drew two pairs on the turn. Unbeknownst to both, dark horse Martin Hruby (Negreanu’s team mate at PokerStars) had drawn an even better hand – a low straight – on the turn and ended up taking the monster pot. When Hruby put Negreanu out of his misery once and for all only a few hands later, his colleague was less than genial about the loss.

Hruby seemed to dominate the action leading up to the heads-up portion of the event, taking Konstantinos Nanos out in third. Up to that point, online qualifier Michael Eiler – a 20 year old amateur from Germany – had been quietly but consistently building up his stack, and when it came time to put his money where his mouth was, Eiler proved that his silence was deadly.

Eiler immediately doubled up his considerably smaller stack and over the next 90 minutes pulled ahead with a series of small, methodical wins. In the final hand of the Main Event, Eiler went all in with A-T suited and Hruby called with a tiny pair of 2s. Eiler was well-rewarded with a flush on the flop, and it was all downhill from there for Hruby.

Eiler is known as mae9690 online and won his seat at the EPT Vienna Main Event in a PokerStars qualifier. He had a rough time at the end of Day 4 and nearly wiped out just short of the final table when he lost two big hands worth nearly two million chips to Negreanu and Hruby, but he rallied after his night off and for his efforts is taking home an impressive €700,000 prize.

Related Entries