Johnny Lodden Joins EUREKA Poker Tour Croatia, Nadal Hosts Mobile Event

PokerStars Lands in Croatia

PokerStars’ EUREKA Poker Tour landed in Croatia over the weekend and after two opening days of action a total of 276 players took to the felt.

All anteing up the necessary €1,100 entry fee, the prizepool has breached the €250,000 mark and so far a number of recognisable faces have been in action at the felt.

One of the most famous is recent EPT Grand Final third place finisher, Johnny Lodden. The aggressive Norwegian managed to secure a career best cash of $612,355 in Monte Carlo and at the time of writing he was coasting along on Day 1B in Dubrovnik with 14,600 chips.

While Day 1B is currently in full swing, the Main Event’s first session came to a close yesterday with Daniel Ebersold on top.

Having seen the field whittled down from 108 to just 36, Ebersold’s 151,500 chip stack was enough to put him ahead of Triantafyllos Chadiroglou (138,300) and Alt Chandru (127,100) when time was called on the session.

Also still in contention when play came to a halt was one of Full Tilt’s Romanian Ambassadors, Robert Cezarescu with 14,800 chips.

Today’s session will come to a close later tonight before the two starting fields are merged for tomorrow’s official Day 2.

Nadal’s Special Live Tournament

Rafa Nadal‘s growing love affair with poker continued over the weekend with an impromptu poker tournament at the Paris Tennis Club.

Just a five minute stroll from the hallowed clay courts of Roland Garros, the tournament was a designed to be a bit of light relief as well as a promotion tool for PokerStars’ mobile platform.

Indeed, with 200 players all either playing on their phones or their mobile devices, the tournament was an interesting cross between live and online poker.

While the players were all smiles before the tournament, there was a distinct air of competitiveness when the cards were in the air; especially with the chance to eliminate one of the world’s best tennis players on offer.

Indeed, with half the field eliminated, Nadal soon found himself heading the same way after he moved all-in with K-Q and was unable to stay ahead of his opponent’s J-6.

With the tournament’s main player watching from the sidelines, it was left to “Kinkin.a.60” to scoop all the chips in play and collect a specially signed chip set from Nadal at the end of the event.