Seat 8: Ondrej Vinklarek, 28, Kolin, Czech Republic
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Ondrej ��vinkyy�� Vinklarek was the EPT8 Player of the Year and already has lifetime tournament winnings totalling more than $600k.
Vinklarek, 28, from Kolin, has been a poker pro for more than four years. As a Chess Candidate Master with a FIDE ranking of 2100, he first came across poker while playing at a big chess festival where they were promoting a live poker free-roll. He said: ��I didn��t know the rules and had no idea what Texas Hold��em was but it was still fun. Later on I was in a shop with friends and we saw a chip set, so we started playing home games. After that I started playing small buy-in tournaments online.��
At the time, Vinklarek was studying Maths and Physics at Charles University; the turning point in his poker career came when he entered a $24 tourney online - and won it for $6,000.
Vinklarek��s best result to date was besting a 652-strong field in last year��s WCOOP $530 NL Re-buy tourney for $160,000. His biggest live cash was runner-up in a EPT Berlin �2k last season for �63,000 and other big scores include winning a �1k side event at EPT8 Barcelona, runner-up in an EPT8 Prague �5k NL Turbo and winning an EPT Barcelona �2k NL Turbo at the start of this season.
In Season 8, the year he won EPT Player of the Year, he said: ��This has definitely been a break-out 12 months for me �C both the WCOOP win and now doing so well in this season��s EPT side events.��
Vinklarek, dubbed ��the Czech Chris Moorman��, first took the lead in the EPT8 Player of the Year race in Prague by winning the �1k NL Turbo Bounty, finishing second in the �5k NL Turbo side event and making the final of a �1k side event. He kept up the pace at the 2012 PCA when he finished third (out of 236) in a $2k NL Turbo tourney. He has nine other cashes on the European Poker Tour worth $10k or more.