Leo Worthington-Leese Wins European Poker Tour Cyprus Eureka Main Event

The 2024 European Poker Tour Cyprus stop kicked off with a bang. The $1,100 buy-in Eureka Poker Tour no-limit hold’em main event that sat at the top of the schedule drew a massive turnout of 2,803 total entries, resulting in a prize pool of nearly $2.7 million.

After six starting flights and three more days of combined-field action, the United Kingdom’s Leo Worthington-Leese was crowned the champion. The Brighton, England resident walked away with $314,030, which was the second-largest score of his career. His top payday remains the $425,272 he secured as the third-place finisher in last year’s EPT Monte-Carlo main event. He now has more than $1.5 million in recorded tournament scores to his name.

This victory also earned Worthington-Leese 1,200 Card Player Player of the Year points. This was his second title and sixth final-table finish of the year. With 2,290 total points, he now sits inside the top 125 in the 2024 POY standings presented by Global Poker.

The top 418 finishers made the money in this event, with big names like Victoria Livschitz (81st), 2020 World Series of Poker Online main event champion Stoyan Madanzhiev (64th), two-time bracelet winner Alexandre Reard (53rd), two-time bracelet winner Michael Wang (51st), two-time bracelet winner Martin Zamani (39th), Marle Spragg (35th), and _WPT and EPT champion Andrey Pateychuk (14th).

The final day began with eight players remaining and Yuan Xu on top of the leaderboard. Worthington-Leese sat in sixth chip position to start, but was only a few big blinds away from being inside the top three.

Alexey Badulin lost a classic preflop race to finish eighth ($46,600), with his A-J losing against the pocket tens of Aleksandr Razinkov. Frederick Anastasiades was then able to overcome the pocket fours of Recep Aydemir (7th – $60,850) with A-9 to narrow the field to six.

Guoliang Wei called off his last handful of blinds with 10-6 suited facing a small-blind shove from Samuel Fournier, who held A-J. Neither player connected with the board and Wei was sent packing in sixth place ($78,770). Fournier then picked up pocket aces against the pocket nines of Xu and flopped aces full after all of the chips went in preflop to end Xu’s run in fifth place ($101,390).

Razinkov was the next to fall. He shoved from the small blind with K3 and received a quick call from Anastasiades, whose A9 made a winning two pair by the river. Razinkov was awarded $132,120 for his efforts.

The final three agreed to a deal to redistribute the remaining prize money, leaving the trophy and $79,957 set aside for the eventual winner. After that was hashed out, Worthington-Leese shoved from the small blind with 109 and was looked up by Fournier and his pocket fives out of the big blind. Worthington-Leese flopped a nine, turned a ten, and held from there to send Fournier to the rail with the $237,051 he negotiated for.

The next big clash pitted pocket sevens for Anastasiades against the pocket queens of Worthington-Leese. The larger pocket pair held up and Anastasiades was left with just a couple of big blinds remaining in his stack.

The final hand saw Anastasiades shove with K2. Worthington-Leese called from the big blind with J3 and the board came down 75496 to give Worthington-Leese a seven-high straight on the end. With that he locked up the title, while Anastasiades was eliminated in second place ($248,479).

Here is a look at the payouts and POY points awarded at the final table:

Photo credits: Rational Intellectual Holdings Ltd. / Danny Maxwell.