Fahredin Mustafov in Full Control Heading into WPT Prague Final Table
After five exciting days of poker, just six players remain in the World Poker Tour Prague Main Event. They're led by Bulgarian Fahredin Mustafov with 2.7 million in chips. On Sunday, on the live-streamed final table, the remaining six will battle for the first-place prize of €175,000 and a seat into the WPT Tournament of Champions worth $15,400.
The penultimate day started with 18 players, out of which Steve O'Dwyer was without question the biggest name. O'Dwyer, with $11.2 million in live tournament earnings, has a whopping $3.6 million more in earnings than the entire remaining field combined, but his day ended in unfortunate fashion.
O'Dwyer got nearly all his chips in the middle against Abdelkader Benhalima, who had four-bet shoved jack-eight of spades into O'Dwyer's ace-king. Benhalima rivered a straight, and O'Dwyer was knocked out two hands later. Without the renowned pro in their way, other big names looked to take control.
However, the big names weren't very fortunate, as Yann Dion busted right before O'Dwyer in 15th place for €10,300, followed by Belarusian Ihar Soika in 13th and Igor Yaroshevskyy in 12th. With that, the tournament lost it's four biggest money winners, leaving Henrik Hecklen and Sergio Aido as the two remaining accomplished live tournament pros.
After the final nine were reached, the tournament quickly lost Pavel Savin, who took home €17,000.
The eight-handed battle lasted several hours, before Sergio Aido lost a coin flip for his tournament life with threes against Pavel Plesuv's ace-ten.
The final seven then fought for a spot at the official final table, and Pavel Veksler was the victim of this battle. Veksler lost a flip with ace-queen against Mustafov's tens, and the final table was set.
Here's the final table seat draw and chip count:
| Seat | Name | Country | Chip Count |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Henrik Hecklen | Denmark | 256,000 |
| 2 | Javier Gomez | Spain | 665,000 |
| 3 | Abdelkader Benhalima | Algeria | 1,271,000 |
| 4 | Pavel Plesuv | Moldova | 895,000 |
| 5 | Pedro Marques | Portugal | 1,756,000 |
| 6 | Fahredin Mustafov | Bulgaria | 2,840,000 |
Tune back in on Sunday for the PokerNews live updates at 2:30 p.m. CET, which will be in sync with the WPT live stream with hole cards up. The PokerNews live updates will have no spoilers, so you follow our coverage along with the live stream to make sure you won't miss a thing!