Darius Neagoe Races To World Series of Poker Europe €1,100 Turbo Bounty Title

It only took one (admittedly long) day for the 2024 World Series of Poker Europe €1,100 buy-in no-limit hold’em turbo bounty hunter event to play down from a field of 458 entries to a champion. After 32 completed 20-minute levels, Romania’s Darius Neagoe scored the final knockout of the day a bit after 3:00 AM local time. For the win, Neagoe secured his first WSOP gold bracelet and the top payout of $70,652. This was his largest live score yet.

This was also Neagoe’s second recorded tournament title, having previously taken down the 2019 888poker LIVE Bucharest €888 buy-in event for $69,776. With this latest win, his career earnings have surpassed $200,000.

Neagoe also secured 720 Card Player Player of the Year points as the champion. This was his third POY-qualified score of the year, with two smaller final-table showings already under his belt. With 968 total points, he now sits within reach of the top 600 in the 2024 POY standings presented by Global Poker.

The solid turnout for this event resulted in a prize pool of $477,877, with the top 69 finishers earning a slice of that prize money. Big names that ran deep included World Poker Tour champions Matas Cimbolas (59th) and David Dongwoo Ko (44th), six-time bracelet winner Shaun Deeb (36th), bracelet winner Or Nezer (26th), recent WSOPE 2,000 pot-limit Omaha bracelet winner Vivian Saliba (19th), bracelet winner Simone Andrian (16th), and two-time bracelet winner Ilija Savevski (11th).

Neagoe’s first knockout at the final table saw his A-7 best the A-8 of Holger Klock (6th – $9,546), making a jack-high straight on the turn to narrow the field to five. He followed that up by eliminating 2022 WSOP main event seventh-place finisher Aaron Duczak in fifth place ($13,209), with K-Q overcoming A-9 in that instance. Duczak’s career earnings sit at $1.9 million after this latest deep run.

Nikolay Traskevich busted Paulo Costa (4th – $18,537) to close the gap a bit, but Neagoe’s 97 outraced the pocket threes of Michael Wingeyer (3rd – $38,240) to give him more than a 6:1 chip lead going into heads-up play.

It took just one hand for that lead to be converted into the title. Traskevich shoved from the button with 97, and Neagoe called from the big blind with 55. The board came down 985Q6 and Neagoe’s set of fives faded the turned flush draw of Traskevich to lock up the title. Traskevich earned $50,783 as the runner-up.

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

Photo credit: WSOP, Kings Resort / Tomas Stacha.