iStockphoto / grinvalds
The European Poker Tour (EPT) Prague Main Event (€5,300 buy-in, single re-entry) began on Monday (12/11) and it brought in 412 entries for a massive prize pool of €6,232,250 and it didn’t take long for things to get weird.
On Day 1b a fight broke out after a hand where one player was eliminated. And the player who won the hand was later ejected from the tournament for head-butting the loser in the face.
If that all sounds abstract, let’s assign some names and hands to paint the picture. Michele Nizzardelli of Italy with $29K in career winnings was in a hand against Ghattas Kortas of Sweden who has $525K in career tournament winnings, according to their PokerNews profiles with data powered by the HendonMob database.
Ghattas Kortas was all-in with 10s10h to Michele Nizzardelli’s AsKc (Nizzardelli had Kortas covered). The flop came out Kd4h7h with Michele hitting his king. Kortas didn’t get any help on the turn or river which came out QcJs.
Here’s where things got heated and violent… According to CardPlayer, Ghattas Kortas was apparently steaming from being eliminated and walked behind his opponent and snatched his hat off his head when Nizzardelli wasn’t looking.
Nizzardelli, who was still in the tournament, reportedly responded in kind by shoving Kortas in the back who then fell to the ground. This is already more heated than one would expect to see at a poker table but things were just heating up.
Kortas apparently got up and made a move toward Nizzardelli who threw up his dukes in an apparent gesture of readiness to throw down. When the two got face to face, Michele Nizzardelli is reported to have head-butted Kortas in the nose and knocked him to the ground (again).
It was around this point that security apparently showed up and immediately escorted Nizzardelli out of the room and out of the tournament while Kortas was asking everyone around if his face was okay after he got head-butted on the bridge of his nose.
Days later, there are currently 53 players left in the tournament with Day 3 playing out as I write this. The winner will take home €1,030,000 for 1st. A live stream/replay of today’s action can be seen above.