The €1,100 PokerStars Festival Main Event Starts Today
Welcome to the €1,100 PokerStars Festival Main Event in Rozvadov! The small municipality in the south-east of the Czech Republic has brought poker enthusiasts around the world together for the PokerStars Festival. Today at 4 p.m. local time, the flagship event of the series kicks off. With four starting days and a staggering guarantee of €500,000, the €1,100 Main Event is sure to be an exciting and fiercely contested event.
It's the second PokerStars Festival on European soil since it's incarnation. In January, Rehman Kassam walked away with the trophy and ￡89,320 ($111,638) at the inaugural event in London. The runner-up Daniel Harwood, who received ￡95,000 ($118,738) after a chop, is also looking to take a shot at more Festival glory.
Both Kessam and Harwood are present in Rozvadov and have been making waves already. Harwood finished fourth in the €550 PokerStars Super Deep yesterday, cashing €10,249. The event was won by Oleksandr 'Onbithbiu' Strokolis of Ukraine, who won €25,679. Kessam will be playing the Main Event at a discount after winning one of the many satellites here at King's Casino this morning. Yesterday, the €170 Giga Satellite provided another 34 entries for this event, which gave even more players a shot to turn their small investment into a big payday.
PokerStars Team Pro's Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier (who's still playing in the €5,300 King's High Roller) and Marcin Horecki are scheduled to appear, as well as Team PokerStars Online Pro Jaime Staples.
Day 1a is the first of four starting days and features ten levels of 45 minutes each, with breaks scheduled in between. Late registration closes after level 6 and players will start with 30,000 in chips. Day 1b and 1c will feature the same structure and will start at 4 p.m. in the subsequent days, Day 1d is a 20-minute turbo re-entry, restricted to players who busted on one of the first three starting days, and will be played on Saturday night.
The field will finally be combined on Sunday to play Day 2 together. The winner of the Main Event will be crowned on Monday night. PokerNews will provide start-to-finish coverage from "RozVegas" and bring you all the action from the floor as it happens. The final day of the €5,300 King's High Roller also gets underway at 5 p.m. local time and you can follow the updates here.
Blind structure
| Level | Small Blind | Big Blind | Ante |
| 1 | 50 | 100 | |
| 2 | 75 | 150 | |
| 3 | 100 | 200 | 25 |
| 4 | 150 | 300 | 50 |
| 5 | 200 | 400 | 50 |
| 6 | 250 | 500 | 75 |
| 7 | 300 | 600 | 100 |
| 8 | 400 | 800 | 100 |
| 9 | 500 | 1,000 | 100 |
| 10 | 600 | 1,200 | 200 |