Original Platinum Pass Winner Mihai Manole Seeks to Win Another
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Mihai Manole was having a bad poker trip.
Like so many times before, he had traveled to a PokerStars European Poker Tour event, this time EPT Prague — well, not exactly, as that year it was temporarily rebranded to the PokerStars Championship Prague.
He'd had plenty of success on the EPT before, highlighted by a six-figure score making the EPT Barcelona final table in 2009. Sure, there had been some trips with poor results as well, as is bound to happen when putting in significant tournament volume. But Manole really seemed to be dogged by bad luck on this particular trip.
"I didn't win any hand in any tournament for 10 days," Manole says with a laugh, looking back on his awful results.
Exaggeration or not, he at least had a shot to cash the Main Event when he made the third day with 11 big blinds and 13 eliminations to go before the tournament was in the money. However, when down to less than two big blinds on the stone bubble, he found himself having to call off his tournament life with ace-four in the big blind or risk blinding out of the tournament in just a few hands thanks to the small blind and traditional antes.
Unable to overcome an opponent's ace-jack, Manole found himself felted on the stone bubble, seemingly the rotten cherry on top of a curdled sundae.
Salvation from PokerStars
Some good news followed. Another player, Andrzej Siemieniak, had also been eliminated when his set couldn't hold against a gutshot in a three-bet pot. As the two players were at different tables, that meant they'd split a min-cash, so Manole would get a rebate at least and make most of his money back.
Then came another development. A staff member pulled both players aside and told them to wait. At that point, Manole knew something was up.
"When you bust a tournament, they don't tell you just stay here and feel the pain," Manole says.
Former face of the company Daniel Negreanu picked up the microphone and made a staggering announcement: PokerStars would be hosting a $25K tournament unlike any the poker world had ever seen, qualifying players for more than 300 seats and adding a further $1 million to the prize pool. It would be called the PokerStars Players NL Hold'em Championship , a.k.a. the "PSPC." And the first ticket, dubbed a Platinum Pass, would be handed out to the player who bubbled the Prague Main.
As Manole and Siemieniak had split the bubble, organizers decided they'd flip for the Pass via a face-up poker hand.
The first hand dealt ended up being an anticlimactic chop. The dealer then shuffled up and fired out another. Manole's king-ten dominated Siemieniak's king-five and no five appeared on the board. That was that, and Manole was named the first Platinum Pass winner.
Except...
...in reality, Manole's kicker didn't even play. The hand should have been chopped once again!
"That was a funny situation that happened," Manole remembers with a smile. "I had a feeling that something was not right, but I couldn't say, 'Hey, Daniel,' in front of the cameras, in the middle of the room."
"What if I'm wrong? I'm playing for 15 years and I can't read a poker hand? Daniel has more much experience than me, so I went with him," he says.
Manole then did a round of interviews, including one with PokerNews:
During those interviews, Manole mingled with staff, including Negreanu. Manole was close enough to hear a staff member urgently tell Negreanu there was a problem and the hand should have been chopped.
"The other guy was sitting in the middle of the table," Manole recalls. "Twenty centimeters from the cards. He just left and nobody knew where he went."
After about two hours, Manole spotted Siemieniak on the rail. He directed staff to Siemieniak.
"Daniel said no way they gonna play a hand again, so we have to give them both passes," Manole says. "That was a crazy day. Crazy, crazy."
A Great Experience
Manole flew to the Bahamas for the PSPC to kick off 2019.
He sat down as one of the most accomplished players to score a Platinum Pass, with almost $2.5 million in tournament earnings. In a field full of relative neophytes, Manole found himself in a dream spot.
Things went swimmingly early on, too, as Manole ran his chips up to about seven times the starting stack. Unfortunately for the Romanian, things took a sharp turn downhill about two hours before the bubble burst. He lost a big hand and busted about 25 spots before the money.
Still, the trip proved extremely fruitful. Manole fired in the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Main Event, a tournament he said he'd never have played without winning the Platinum Pass. He made a run all the way to seventh, good for a score of $208,920.
'One Way or Another, I'm Going to Win a Platinum Pass'
Manole has nothing but great things to say about the first PSPC.
"That was a great tournament," he says. "I think everybody had this opinion. One of the best tournaments, that you must play."
Given that sentiment, it's no surprise that Manole has already circled the date for the next PSPC when it was announced a few months ago during EPT Barcelona as taking place at next year's festival in the same location.
Manole packed the same sweater he wore when he qualified in 2017 for this trip, and as an online qualifier for 2019 EPT Prague, he will get his shot at another Platinum Pass if he can bag for Day 2. All online qualifiers who advance will play a Crazy Pineapple flipout until someone is left holding a Pass.
"I said to my friends, to my wife," Manole says, "'Somehow, one way or another, I'm going to win a Platinum Pass to Barcelona. Or, if I don't win it, I'll play satellites. Somehow, I'm going to play that tournament.'"
Manole said he expects the second edition of the PSPC to be even bigger and better than the first, which smashed expectations by drawing over 1,000 runners and awarding $5.1 million to the winner, Ramon Colillas. The location will be more convenient for scores of European players, Manole points out. Plus, the success of the first one will fuel players chasing huge money and dreams of poker glory — Colillas was almost immediately patched up by PokerStars.
Even if Manole starts out running poorly here at EPT Prague, he's living proof that things can turn in a hurry. There might even be a Platinum Pass on the horizon when the storm clears.
