Gabriel Chiva wins the PokerFest Main Event in November 2013

The PokerFest Bucharest Festival finished last night and Gabriel Chiva is the new champion of our circuit. Entering day 1B, Chiva, a young programmer and manager of his own company, was looking for some fun at the tables, but in the end, he took down the tournament and won €40,490 in a field composed by 237 players.

In the last day, Chiva was chip leader in a final table composed by both professional players and amateurs. Gabriel never relinquished the first place during the play, eliminating four of his eight competitors with a fearless play, timely aggression and, of course, some good cards in the right moments.

In heads-up, Gabriel had a two to one chip-lead against one of Bulgaria’s most prolific players, Slaven Popov. According to hendonmob.com, Slaven has over $200,000 in live tournament earnings, but most of his accomplishments are signed on the virtual felts. The most important result is the victory in Popov’s career came in 2012, when he took down the PokerStars SCOOP Main Event for $560,000.

The battle between Chiva and Popov lasted less than ten hands, and they played two key pots. In the first one, Chiva opened on the button with a min-raise and Popov called. On a board , Popov check-called every street just to see that Chiva had him beat with for a full house.

Then, with 20 blinds remaining, Popov min-raised on the button, Chiva shoved from the big blind and Popov called, risking elimination. Chiva turned over , Popov was behind with , and the board ran , securing the victory for Chiva.

Congratulations to all of our winners, good luck to all the poker players.

Here is the full list of prizes awarded in our Main Event:

Our next big tournament is in December, when we will have a special event with a €300 buy-in and a €150,000 guaranteed prize pool. The details will be published in a couple of days.