You only need to peruse a poker strategy forum for a few minutes before stumbling across threads describing Black Friday’s devastating effects on the U.S. poker market. For the most part, however, poker has been unaffected in other parts of the world. WPT Prague just took place in the Czech Republic, and it was a wild success.

Many people are quick to credit Martin Staszko’s runner up finish in the WSOP Main Event for the surge in entries for this event. In fact, it broke the record for the most entries ever in a WPT tournament in Europe! A €1.75 million prize pool was created after 571 players paid the €3,500 entry fee. The first place prize was an impressive €450k.

It didn’t take too long for the final table to become quite short handed. First Russell Carson, known as ‘rdcrsn’ in online poker rooms, lost a flip and was eliminated in 6th place. Then Sigurd Eskelund also lost a flip and was eliminated by Andrey Pateychuk in 5th place.

Four-handed play went on for a while. Finally Benjamin Pollak got his chips in the middle against Adria Balaguer, but he was behind. He couldn’t find a suck out and ended up busting in fourth place.

Pateychuk took advantage of three-handed play and really started to increase his chip stack. He gained chips steadily both before and after the dinner break in an aggressive manner. Then he sucked out on Stanislaw Kretz all-in preflop, which meant that Stanislaw Kretz had to settle for 3rd place.

Heads-up was pretty exciting. First Pateychuk lost a big pot with AK versus Balaguer’s J4s, which gave him the short stack. He got the chip lead back, though, by getting lucky with A6 versus AJ. Then he was lucky again with A5 against QQ. This meant that he was the winner of WPT Prague!

Pateychuk likely feels on top of the world right now, since he also recently won EPT San Remo. Also keep in mind that he just barely missed making the WSOP Main Event final table earlier this year in July! Talk about a hot streak.

If you aspire to win tournaments just like Pateychuk, you will need to build a bankroll and practice as much as possible. It’s best to build your bankroll online, and you should take advantage of poker bonuses. Whether it’s welcome bonuses or deposit bonuses, you can always use the extra money.