Tournament Spotlight: HORSES – The Mixed Main Event of The Festival Series
Our previous edition of The Festival Series had one major additional tournament to the schedule, the HORSES Main Event. You would immediately start thinking what this extra 'S' would stand for; Well, it's simple! Sviten Special is one of the most favourite mixed games of our live event, and thus it happened that our team came with the idea of adding another Mixed Game to the original HORSE format. Hold your Horses, because here comes the tournament spotlight!
The Festival Series keeps innovating when it comes to introducing 'new' tournament formats which you usually don't see being part of any tournament schedule. For the next upcoming event in Rozvadov, where you can still qualify for online, we have two poker formats added for you once again! 2-7 Triple Draw and 7-Card Stud FL, will be the new additions which we are looking forward to a lot. Among great mixed games action all around it's the €550 HORSES Mixed Main Event, which will have a guaranteed prize pool of €25,000 this time and a total of three opening flights. Let's dive into the archives and put you up to speed about the history of this event!
Jon Kyte wins first ever HORSES Main Event
It's the end of November 2023, Banco Casino in Bratislava is fully packed with poker enthusiasts from all over Europe. The Hold'em Main Event is in full swing, which usually takes all the attention of the poker media and organisation, but not entirely this time around! The Mixed Main Event, a newly introduced poker format, knew its debut and a total of 67 entries were made across several opening flights. Prior to the event, there had been quite some doubts about the tournament structure itself in terms of how many blind levels should be played on the first day of the tournament, or what the average should be at the end of the registration period. Luckily, we got help from one of the great Mixed Games players in the world, Tobias Leknes from Norway. Not only with his experience as a player, but also his enthusiasm for tournament structures and organisations, he had given his thoughts about the most ideal structure for this event. In the end, it had turned out pretty well, although some minimal changes had to be done on site.
As stated, a total of 67 entries were made, accumulating in a total prize pool of €31,825. Overall, a very decent turn out for a brand new poker format. A poker format which owner of The Festival, Martin 'Franke' von Zweigbergk, thought he was going to be very good at. Sadly it turned out to become a disaster for him as he didn't make it towards the money. That same story goes for WSOPE-Bracelet winner Dainius Antanaitis, who was one of the first players to hit the rail on Day 2.
The event attracted more mixed games fanatics from all over Europe. Bas de Laat, a very accomplished Dutch all-round poker player who resides in Malta, also decided to head over to Bratislava for the mixed games action. Usual suspects such as Frank Visser, Barrie Dear, and Sami Pulliainen, also were in the mix. In the end, at every tournament, there can only be one winner. We couldn't even call it surprising anymore as Jon Kyte from Norway is such a complete poker player and a big fan of mixed games. He already had done well for himself in the months prior to this event in Las Vegas, but topped it off with a massive 2nd place during the EPT Prague Main Event. Surely his win of the first ever HORSES event in history, collecting €8,825 for his win, hugely contributed to his success at EPT Prague!
Live tournaments are available in every corner of the world, but to have a player like Jon Kyte as friend of The Festival, is something we can only cherish. Sadly he won't be defending his title this year as from what we have heard, but we wish him all the best in his quest to capture a WSOP Bracelet this year!
| Place | Player | Country | Prize |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Jon Kyte | Norway | €8,825 |
| 2 | Dimitris Giannakou | Cyprus | €4,800 |
| 3 | Robin Panholzer | Austria | €4,600 |
| 4 | Jonas Jurksaitis | Lithuania | €2,950 |
| 5 | Barrie Dear | United Kingdom | €2,200 |
| 6 | Jarkko Suokas | Finland | €1,800 |
| 7 | Ola Brandborn | Sweden | €1,550 |
| 8 | Bas de Laat | Netherlands | €1,350 |
| 9 | Michael Wehner | Germany | €1,350 |
| 10 | Sami Pulliainen | Finland | €1,200 |
| 11 | Frank Visser | Netherlands | €1,200 |
