4/3/2022

Nick Galtos Poker

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  • A poker kept for show: curate (q.v.) = the work-a-day iron; (2) the bottom half of a tea-cake or muffin (as getting more butter), the top half' being the curate, and so forth. Rector of the females, subs. (venery).—The penis: see Prick. Rochester, Poems.
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On Day 1b of PokerStars Championship presented by Monte-Carlo Casino® €5,300 Main Event, Italian player Gianluca Speranza finished with a narrow lead atop a tightly bunched group of players as 222 of 481 runners made it through the day. Speranza's stack of 201,500 means Day 1a leader Jeff Hakim still paces the field by a wide margin.

The players got into the habit of throwing in their poker chips, as needed, for 'hero points' allowing to reroll duff rolls, do extra damage, rapid heal wounds etc While the adventure was very hack'n'slash ( this time round: a giant crab and a large snake ), the best brawl came at the end of the evening when the four-strong party took on eight.

PositionPlayerCountryChip Count
1Gianluca SperanzaItaly201,500
2Michael KolkowiczFrance197,300
3Makram SaberLebanon192,000
4Xavier RouayrouxFrance192,000
5David UrbanSlovakia188,700
6Raffaele SorrentinoItaly175,200
7Remi CastaignonFrance160,000
8Christopher FrankGermany152,000
9Vasyl ZabrodskyyUkraine146,400
10Aleksei IstominRussia144,600

Meanwhile, one of poker biggest superstars of a few years also put in a good performance. Patrik Antonius, who still is one of the most recognizable faces in poker, turned back the clock a bit as he ran up the chip lead by dinner break before ultimately finishing with 102,200.

Antonius sat in during Level 4 and doubled his starting stack almost immediately.

Antonius, best known for his high-stakes cash exploits, also has over $6.7 million in tournament winnings but has only booked a single cash in the past three years as he moves farther and farther from the global tournament scene.

Antonius sat in during Level 4 and doubled his starting stack almost immediately with a discerning call when he and an opponent each missed flush draws. Antonius did make a pair of fives, however, and called off on the river when his opponent put him all in.

Right before dinner, Antonius made a big move up the chip counts when four players saw an ace-king-three flop for a three-bet. Antonius held ace-three for two pair, and the player who three-bet was unable to get away from ace-queen, helping the Fin go to dinner with over 300 big blinds after he faded his opponent's outs on the turn and river.

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Other notables bagging over six figures included EPT Barcelona champ Sebastian Malec (140,200), PokerStars Team Pro Liv Boeree (127,400), recent PokerStars National Championship winner Andreas Klatt, Davidi Kitai and Tom Hall.

Jan Bendik who won the last EPT event here last year, also made it through, as did PokerStars Team Pros Daniel Negreanu, Igor Kurganov and Bertrand 'ElkY' Grospellier.

Ryan Riess' recent heater, including a WPT title in Florida, did not continue as he fizzled out after losing most of his stack to Jason Wheeler. Players joining him on the rail included Anthony Zinno, Paul Newey, Ami Barer, Ivan Luca and PokerStars Team Pro Felipe Ramos.

Day 1b's field pushed the two-flight total for the event to 716 runners, and there's still time for more to join them. Registration remains open until the noon restart, and PokerNews will pick up the coverage again then, so be sure to return for Day 2.

TableSeatNameCountryChip Count
11Stefan SchillhabelGermany203.000
12Francesco GriecoItaly58.900
14Craig VarnellUnited States115.700
15Vicente DelgadoSpain107.000
16Jose Vendrell SchwaigerGermany27.000
17Marcin WysockiDenmark19.000
18Mikko TurtiainenFinland37.700
21Matthew HopkinsUnited Kingdom94.600
22Ran AzorIsrael24.100
23Patrik TkacSlovakia37.600
24Salvatore PepiItaly39.500
25Maria HoUnited States16.500
26Mark TeltscherUnited Kingdom90.100
27Dominik NitscheGermany26.200
28Romain NardinFrance86.000
31Igor KurganovRussia76.000
32Peter EichhardtSweden121.900
33John JuandaIndonesia45.900
34Christoph VogelsangGermany69.500
35Jack SalterUnited Kingdom75.800
36Preben StokkanNorway54.600
38Charlie CarrelUnited Kingdom48.400
41Dmitrii DeviatovRussia15.400
42Valerii LubenetsUkraine83.700
43Daniel NegreanuCanada27.600
45Ryan FranklinUnited States106.000
46Leo NordinSweden28.700
47Paul HoeferGermany12.100
48Manuel SadornilSpain50.500
52Jason MercierUnited States83.400
53Alin GrasuRomania43.500
54Vitaliy ImertsakiUkraine37.100
55Hossein EnsanGermany80.000
56Dermot BlainIreland37.000
57Walid Bou HabibLebanon35.000
58Luigi ContiItaly94.700
61Firas NassarLebanon51.600
62Micha de GraafBelgium93.400
63Jimmy GuerreroFrance48.000
64Sam GraftonUnited Kingdom12.000
66Anton HrabchakUkraine48.700
67Keven StammenUnited States38.700
68Pascal HartmannGermany152.100
71Tiberiu ZanfiracheRomania46.300
72Andreas KlattGermany118.000
73Yan LiChina50.500
74Ariel MalnikLithuania78.300
75Sindre TvedtNorway76.800
77Steven MulderGermany20.600
78Davy ChamorroFrance3.600
81Cosmin Mihai PetricaRomania109.600
82Govert MetaalNetherlands19.800
83Lukasz KubickiPoland92.700
84Onur UnsalTurkey115.800
85Daniel SmithMonaco90.100
87Johan GuilbertFrance47.400
88Remi CastaignonFrance160.000
91Morten MortensenDenmark96.800
93Martin LundeNorway87.000
94Benjamin PollakFrance53.800
95Patrik AntoniusFinland102.200
96Hideki TakafujiJapan70.700
97Andrejs MaklecovsLatvia81.500
98Alexandru PapazianRomania95.300
101Nabil ChayaCanada31.700
102Vladimir DemenkovRussia70.000
103Roger TondeurSwitzerland77.000
104Sergio AidoSpain52.300
105Steve O'DwyerIreland24.200
106Jogvan GlerfossFaroe Islands25.600
107Paul-Francois TedeschiFrance60.400
111Carlos ChangTaiwan109.300
112Aurelien GuigliniFrance28.900
113Børge SandsgaardNorway37.600
114Krisztian FejerdiHungary7.500
115Michel Pereira MarquesBrazil168.900
117Giovanni LenaItaly67.900
118Luke CerklewiczUnited Kingdom36.400
122Nikolay NikolovBulgaria40.400
123Markus DurneggerAustria106.400
124Nick PetrangeloUnited States63.000
125Moritz DietrichGermany77.900
126Jeremy MamouFrance23.300
127Nicolas PouzencFrance24.500
128Henrik TollefsenNorway22.300
132Tsugunari TomaJapan70.500
133Martin JacobsonSpain25.900
134Viktor ShenerRussia16.200
135Emil PatelFinland46.100
136Arne CoulierBelgium127.700
137Rabah Ait-AbdelmalekFrance69.400
138Michal VitkovskySlovakia94.000
141Benjamin HeptinstallAustralia84.000
142Carlos MironiukArgentina55.300
143Hauke FickGermany49.700
144Bas De LaatMalta56.200
145Michel PomaretFrance55.000
146Macsim RobertRomania42.400
147Sergei PetrushevskiiRussia91.800
148Philipp KoberAustria51.300
151Karim NabiFrance59.500
152Karim SouaidFrance131.000
153Javier Gomez ZapateroSpain23.600
154Franck MakaciFrance56.200
155Marcin DziembalaPoland70.900
156Mikalai VaskaboinikauBelarus57.500
157Victoria Coren MitchellUnited Kingdom35.500
158Clemente Malheiro CarreiraPortugal61.500
161Sylvain LoosliFrance47.500
162Ibrahim GhassanLebanon44.500
163Fabiano KovalskiBrazil35.000
164[Removed:43]France115.500
165Jerome ArnouldFrance26.200
166Kliment Roussev TarmakovCanada32.300
167Thomas PopovCanada28.200
168Michael KolkowiczFrance197.300
171Maxim PanyakRussia84.600
172Adrien AllainFrance73.000
173Istvan BirizdoHungary61.200
174Sergio CabreraUnited Kingdom24.000
175Bart LybaertBelgium82.600
176Marius GierseGermany77.700
177Vasileios CharalampakisGreece72.000
178Michael KoranSwitzerland30.200
181Viliyan PetleshkovBulgaria129.600
182Sebastian Ruiz FigueroaChile80.800
183Andrew ChenCanada28.600
184Paul GuichardFrance45.400
185Ramin HajiyevAzerbaijan97.000
186Ionut BodogaiRomania49.200
187Adolfo VaezaUruguay65.300
188Carole SegouraFrance73.400
191Tommaso BriottiItaly17.400
192Ramon Miquel MunozSpain121.500
193Frederic CasaltaFrance25.500
194Isaac HaxtonUnited States65.200
195Manig LoeserGermany195.700
196Arezki BelaidiCanada49.200
197Jeffrey HakimLebanon305.300
198Jullian FerioloFrance98.900
201Tommy HjornerudNorway84.100
203Makram SaberLebanon192.000
204Emin AghayevAzerbaijan41.300
205Dmytro ShuvanovUkraine136.100
206Adi AlkalayIsrael105.800
207Marco MasuttiSlovakia39.900
208Jean KojaFrance90.000
211Dan ColmanUnited States13.600
212Ruslan MityayevUkraine28.100
213James MitchellUnited Kingdom109.000
214Adrian IonescuRomania38.400
215[Removed:172]Germany35.200
216Bradley MarshCanada88.300
217Adrien DelmasFrance33.300
218Robert PankowskiPoland33.000
221Jerome L'HostisUnited Kingdom80.500
223Michel EidLebanon49.900
224Dan SmithUnited States49.100
225Dzmitry RabotkinBelarus49.300
226Simonet StephaneFrance53.400
227Kosumosu YamanakaJapan23.800
228Faraz JakaUnited States98.100
231Carlos LopesFrance9.200
232Waldemar NowakPoland19.000
233Dirk Van LuijkBelgium52.300
234[Removed:170]Lithuania94.000
235Jerome SgorranoBelgium28.300
236El Amir Ziad ChehabLebanon30.000
237Jawad BengouraneFrance82.000
238Nicholas GaltosSwitzerland24.100
241Besiana AntoniAlbania13.600
242Hau Minh NguyenAustralia78.200
243Jean MonturyFrance35.000
244Diego VilelaBrazil140.000
245Raffaello LocatelliItaly64.800
246Lee Hon CheongHong Kong10.400
247Natasha BarbourCanada91.600
248Florian KosslerGermany35.500
251Benjamin SaadaFrance22.000
252Matthew WhitingUnited Kingdom42.100
253Juri MereuItaly55.000
254Vishwanath ManjunathUnited Kingdom51.700
255Jean Paul ZaffranIsrael41.400
256Alexander DebusGermany36.600
257Leonardo VilelaBrazil107.200
258Benny GlaserUnited Kingdom56.100
261Didier OrtizColombia38.100
262Jason WheelerUnited States30.900
263Oliver WeisGermany41.900
264Mudasser HussainUnited Kingdom20.100
265Thomas BergNorway83.100
266Igor YaroshevskyyUkraine156.700
267Maria LampropulosArgentina53.000
268Laurynas LevinskasLithuania23.400
271Isabel BaltazarFrance30.200
272Lander LijoSpain40.800
273Gaelle BaumannFrance49.200
274Thomas MuehloeckerAustria18.200
275Hicham MoussaNigeria56.500
276Fabrice SoulierFrance105.100
277Xavier RouayrouxFrance192.000
278Muhyedine FaresSenegal54.900
281Jacques TorbeyLebanon107.300
282Bruno LopezFrance73.200
283Stephen WoodheadUnited Kingdom55.800
284Julio Martini FilhoBrazil60.800
285Levan KaramanishviliUkraine53.300
286Jean-Jacques ZeitounFrance60.000
287Ole SchemionGermany144.900
288Shijirbaatar SanjaasurenMongolia130.000
291Tom HallUnited Kingdom102.000
292Kent RoedNorway41.700
293Maksim ShulgaRussia80.800
294Alexandre MoreauFrance63.200
295Rocco PalumboItaly105.900
296Paul TestudFrance103.000
297Aliaksei BoikaBelarus77.000
298Edouard MignotFrance55.000
301Harry TouilFrance18.700
302Usman SiddiqueUnited Kingdom51.500
303William SaadIvory Coast47.900
304Kaue De SouzaBrazil44.300
305Walery EngelGermany57.300
306Espen SolaasNorway35.300
307Cosmin Ionut DumitricuRomania78.200
308Gerald KarlicAustria45.000
311Raffaele SorrentinoItaly175.200
312Daniel DvoressCanada44.200
313Paul GreselNetherlands50.600
314Aleksandar TomovicSerbia57.500
315Rony HalimiFrance49.800
316Romain LewisFrance82.100
317Benoit LamFrance86.500
318Celina LinAustralia125.500
321Narcis-Gabriel NedelcuRomania103.300
322Andrey BondarRussia49.200
323Aleksandrs GolubevsUnited Kingdom25.900
324Marius CazacuRomania5.100
325Kyrylo KudymaUkraine73.000
326Sebastien CompteFrance26.000
327Donald Duarte SierraNicaragua43.200
328Andrey VlasenkoRussia12.800
331Artur SahakyanArmenia102.800
332Christian StokkelandNorway75.600
333Bertrand 'ElkY' GrospellierFrance50.800
334Christophe LarqueminFrance6.100
335Fatima Moreira De MeloNetherlands32.300
336Peyman LuthGermany78.800
337Shakhabiddin MuradovLatvia142.500
338Salvatore Candido GrazianoSwitzerland22.600
341Anton DeglinneBelgium18.800
342Thiago CremaBrazil128.700
343Christopher GeorgeUnited States24.000
344Alexey TkachenkoRussia21.700
345Patrick SacrispeyreMorocco25.900
346Adrian MateosSpain58.900
347Aladin ReskallahFrance20.000
348Ove StenbergNorway33.400
351Dick PostelMalta12.000
352Iliodoros KamatakisGreece105.000
354Salvatore BiancoItaly127.900
355Luiz DuarteUnited States43.100
356Rafael MoraesBrazil53.400
357Viacheslav GoryachevRussia23.100
358Jose GonzalesArgentina62.000
361Karen OliverUnited Kingdom78.000
362Jerome BrionFrance55.400
363Justin BonomoUnited States71.200
365Hannes SpeiserAustria88.400
366Konstantinos NanosGermany22.300
367Kirill IvanovRussia86.900
368Gianluca SperanzaItaly201.500
371David UrbanSlovakia188.700
372Tom-Aksel BedellNorway17.500
373Giuseppe ZarboFrance36.000
374Davidi KitaiBelgium109.800
375Liv BoereeUnited Kingdom127.400
376Maxim LykovRussia87.300
378Diego ZeiterSwitzerland52.500
382Marco WeidnerGermany31.600
383Ke ChenChina84.300
384Douglas Ferreira SouzaBrazil79.000
385Wesley WongCanada21.000
386Jean AubervalFrance49.600
387Robert HaighGermany55.600
388Chebli ChebliLebanon61.900
391Andrea RocciItaly56.200
392Alexandros KoloniasGreece29.000
394Victor Zabukas BegaraBrazil83.800
395Lucas GreenwoodCanada28.100
396Aleksei IstominRussia144.600
397Christopher FrankGermany152.000
398Davor LaniniItaly90.100
401Evgenii SboevRussia18.700
402Alexandre LuneauFrance69.400
403Andreas HoivoldNorway83.900
404Vasyl ZabrodskyyUkraine146.400
405Ivan GlushkovRussia25.200
406Ian GillespieUnited States34.000
407Yury SalikaevRussia63.200
408Oystein ChristensenNorway38.500
412Simon TaberhamUnited Kingdom61.800
413Julien PirardBelgium28.300
414Marius-Catalin PerteaRomania82.700
415Gavin O'RourkeIreland11.000
416Norberto KornGermany71.300
418Alexios ZervosGreece31.800
421Sebastien LebaronFrance21.500
422Allan DyrstadNorway14.400
423Lauren MonossonUnited States64.100
424Mickael MamouFrance50.800
425Sebastian MalecPoland140.100
426Johny JabraRomania31.800
427Gediminas KareckasLithuania62.700
428Arno ThuyBelgium39.500
431Jan BendikSlovakia67.800
432Stefan VagnerSlovakia11.500
433Michele BianchiSwitzerland58.700
434Artan DedushaUnited Kingdom96.700
436Stefan HuberSwitzerland96.000
437Anil OzdemirTurkey39.500
438Giorgio DonzelliItaly26.700
441Geoffroy CombetteFrance44.800
443Minh Phuc NguyenAustralia75.100
444Francesco FaviaItaly101.000
445Nicola D'AnselmoItaly53.600
446Diego VenturaPeru126.100
447Nicolas Fuentes VidalChile76.400
448Sonny FrancoFrance33.700
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@PokerStars In Prague

There have been representatives of many sports who have turned their hand to poker -- either during their playing days or, more usually, once they are over. These include the roster of Team PokerStars Sportstar, such as Rafa Nadal and Ronaldo, for instance, as well as various other footballers including Royston Drenthe, who once played for Real Madrid, and the former Orient player, Steve Watts.

Today in Prague, however, there's an Australian ex-professional roller hockey player competing in the EPT Main Event, which is not a sentence PokerStars Blog would ever have expected to write. The principal reason is that there's only ever been one Australian professional roller hockey player.

The one and only Nicholas Galtos

His name is Nicholas Galtos, and it's actually no fluke that he's here in Prague today. It isn't even his first visit here for poker as he finished 22nd in the main event in 2012. Since then Galtos has scored cashes in Edinburgh, Cork, Las Vegas, Valencia, Dublin and London and it doesn't take long in his company to realise that the 56-year-old Aussie, who now calls Montreaux in Switzerland home, has had an interesting and varied life and has done it, for the most part, with a smile on his face. It's also immediately apparent that he was destined for sporting career.

'My dad took over a bankrupt sports centre in Brisbane which had a skating rink, swimming pool and squash courts and we had an apartment above it,' he says. 'So growing up there I was swimming every day in the morning, playing squash and hustling pool games, 9-ball and 8-ball when I was nine.'

His attention soon turned to the sport he would go on to make a living from: 'Then I started playing roller hockey and got pretty good at it. I was playing all the sports at school, as you do in Australia, but the roller hockey was something I loved and I ended up playing for the national team.'

Roller hockey is like ice hockey, but is played on a dry surface. There are two main types of the game, with the rules and equipment differing based on what sort of skates you play in. If you're wearing inline skates, it is more like ice hockey but if you play in quad skates (four wheels) it makes the game more like football or basketball due to the greater manoeuvrability that the skates offer.

Galtos's skills helped him travel the world and, in 1978, when he was 18, he travelled to Argentina for the World Championships. At the time Argentina was a country full of political uncertainty and was under rule of a military dictatorship. It didn't stop the crowds coming out for sport, however, and Galtos played in front of a crowd of 14,000 in San Juan. 'The same year that they won the World Cup in football they also won the roller hockey World Championships,' Galtos says.

The military rule extended off the pitch too. 'Each team had a bodyguard who would travel on the team bus,' Galtos says. 'Ours was a guy called Guido. He had a huge pistol in his pocket all the time and you weren't allowed out of the hotel on your own.'

Not that it stopped Galtos. 'I kind of fell in love with a girl there and I got suspended from the Australian team for three years because I snuck out with two other guys and went to meet this girl,' he says. 'We climbed down drainpipes and we took off. I spoke Spanish, which helped, so we went out with these girls and then came back. I got caught, it was an embarrassing thing to happen, and they kicked me out for three years, but I got back in by 1982. I could still play for my club team but not the national team.'

Nick

After returning from Argentina, Galtos was soon off on his travels again. At 20, he played for a team in La Coruna, in northern Spain. He then returned to Australia to complete his studies, before another eventful trip to Europe in 1984. 'We were dropped off in Italy before we went to the World Championships,' he says. 'In a warm-up match I scored four goals against some top Italian team. The president of this team was a millionaire and he told me he wanted me to sign for his team so I rung my wife and told her I was staying in Italy.'

Galtos - got goals, got signed
Galtos

While the game in Australia was strictly amateur, it was a different case in Europe. 'In Australia, we'd be lucky if we got a thousand people but in the 1980s in Italy you'd get between 5,000 and 7,000 people at a game,' he says. And back in the 1980s roller hockey had a higher profile than it does now and it was more than possible to make a decent living from the game.

Nick Poker

'During EPT Barcelona I actually went back and saw one of my friends called Jordi who used to be the captain of FC Barcelona's roller hockey team, which was the best team in the world in the 80s,' Galtos says. 'He's got pictures on the wall of him receiving awards as top sportsman of the year from the King of Spain. He was on the cover of all the top sports papers and magazines. I remember when I was playing for La Coruna I came down to see him and I trained with the Barcelona team for a couple of months before I went home. He was one year older than me - so 22 - and I remember that he was driving a turbo Porsche and making about $100,000 a year tax free which was absolute fortune in Spain at the time. He lived like a king and everywhere he went everyone knew him.'

He continues: 'While roller hockey has gone down a bit in popularity now in those days games were televised and after football, roller hockey was the next big sport.'

Roller hockey reached its zenith in 1992, when the Olympic Games came to Barcelona. Juan Antonio Samaranch, who was the President of the International Olympic Committee from 1980-2001, was an ex-roller hockey goalkeeper, and added it as a demonstration sport at the Games.

'It was his gift back to the sport that kind of launched his career because he was formerly the president of the Roller Hockey Federation,' Galtos says. 'I was 34 in 1992 and I was like, 'Man, I got to play this.'

And play it he did.

'I scored the only goal against Spain when we got flogged (they lost 17-1) and I also scored two goals against Brazil,' Galtos says. 'The state of Australian roller hockey was not very good in 1992 and in fact we were lucky to qualify for the finals. All of our players were amateurs and practising twice a week. I was playing in Europe practising five times a week and the top pros in Spain and Italy, were practising twice a day, five days a week.'

Many professional sportsmen look to move into the coaching side of things and Galtos found himself in charge of the Canadian national team. 'Best fun I ever had,' he says. 'Two of them were ex-professional ice hockey players and they were fantastic people.'

Coaching was not for Galtos

But coaching was never a proper consideration, and as Galtos's playing career wound down, he was playing in Switzerland and exploring interests outside of the game. 'I started moving into business and working with language schools,' he says. 'I bought my own language school in Switzerland and went on from there.' He now has a franchise chain of language schools in the Czech Republic and Switzerland, with around 14 in total, teaching English, French and German.

Nick Poker Player

But unlike so many sportsman who use poker as a chance to stretch their competitive muscles once their playing days are over, Galtos was actually playing poker before he was scoring goals in roller hockey.

Galtos

'I've been playing cash games for years and years,' he says. 'I started playing poker when I was six years old with my Dad - he's a Greek-Russian guy - so there was a big game every week at our house. I started playing that when I was six. The game would've been five-card draw.'

His poker education came in handy when on his travels with the Australian national team. 'We always used to play on trips,' he says. 'I can remember once being in an Australian team travelling to New Zealand I was young, probably 18. I can remember winning a few hundred in a game between us and yawning and wanting to go to sleep. The big guys in the team would turn to you and say, 'It's pretty hard to sleep with two broken legs.' So you'd lose 30 per cent of so of it back before you could leave.'

Galtos also has a great story of a time he travelled to Vegas, when he was in his early 20s. 'It was for a conference, completely unrelated to poker,' he says. 'I dropped into the Mirage and I played 7-card stud. I remember this guy walking by a young guy, a bit weird, funny nose sort of thing and he sat down at the table. This old lady who was next to me said: 'Don't play a pot with him.' I asked her why and she told me he was Stu Ungar. 'Who the hell is Stu Ungar?' I said to her, and she told me he was the best of the best of the best. I chatted with him for a couple of minutes. I didn't know who he was at that stage you know.'

For the past few years Galtos has been learning the language of tournament poker having been strictly a cash player up until then. 'In Switzerland I focused on my business and it was only a few years ago that they allowed casino poker so I started playing again,' he says. 'There were a few young guys who played some of the tournaments but I'd never played a tournament in my life. I played my first tournament three years ago.'

Nick Galtos Poker Wife

In the beginning, Galtos must have wondered why he didn't turn to tournament poker sooner. 'I had the typical thing where it all looks so easy,' he says. 'I came 22nd here in Prague in the Main Event (in 2012) but the second year was just misery. One could say variance but I'd say I made a lot of mistakes. So I decided I should probably study this game and started reading, studying tapes, looking online.'

He also made some useful connections from his time travelling the circuit. 'I was fortunate enough to meet Faraz Jaka, who I really like as both a person and a player. I've chatted a lot with Calvin Anderson, who's a great guy and I know Fabrice Soulier and ElkY.'

Haxton - has impressed Galtos

At EPT London in October he got his greatest poker lesson to date. 'I satellited into the EPT London High Roller and it was an awesome experience,' he says 'I had the Dutch guy who came third in the November Nine [Jorryt van Hoof] on the table. I had Ole Schemion on my right, fantastic person to chat with. Sorel Mizzi was on my table too. He was an absolute nightmare to play against because he's some unpredictable and so good. Just playing with all these amazing players was a great learning experience. Being with these young guys it keeps me thinking, it keeps me curious and keeps my mind moving.'

Today Galtos has been busy making friends with another high roller as he's at the same table with Ike Haxton. 'He's a lovely person,' Galtos says. 'I can't sit here and expect to compete at his level but I can learn from him and I can watch how he plays and try and understand why he does what he does.'

Nick Galtos Poker Tour

But paramount to him is making sure he's enjoying himself while learning. 'I want to have a good time. I'm past the point where I'm freaking out if I make a mistake. Everyone makes mistakes. I was too serious before, when you've been an Olympic athlete you've got that competitive instinct. I chatted to Boris Becker in Berlin at an event and I could see he was very intense as well. At the end he said to me that he should just chill out and enjoy it more and I thought that was good advice.'

Full coverage of the EPT Prague Poker Festival is on the main EPT Prague page. Super High Roller coverage, including blow-by-blow updates in the panel at the top, is on the Super High Roller page. And the Eureka main event is down to the final table and playing to a winner today. That's on the Eureka Prague page.