Eugene Katchalov’s biography
Eugene Katchalov is one of the most famous and most successful Ukrainian poker players. Despite the guy lives in the USA since he was 10 years, the poker player continues to represent Ukraine on the world poker scene, regularly visits the country and is interested in local business and legalization of poker in Ukraine.
Unlike many of his colleagues, Katchalov didn’t start to play poker in his teens, but when he was 20 years old. His friends taught him to play, and at first he played with them at home. Then Eugene made a small deposit at PartyPoker and tried his hand online. As it turned out later – it was not in vain. Playing 10-dollar SnG and inexpensive cash, he earned 20$- 30$ a day and soon began to move up the limits and play more expensive and prestigious tournaments. Then poker became Eugene Katchalov’s main occupation.
Katchalov began to play offline since 2004. He twice got into prizes at the first for him WPT tournament in Las Vegas, having earned more than 75 000$ (in total). 2007 and 2011 are considered to be the most profitable years in the poker player’s career. In 2007, Katchalov won his first million (or rather almost 2,5 million), having become a champion of the Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic, and in 2011 - the poker player hit the payout zone of various prestigious tournaments for 13 times, won his first (and the only one until now) WSOP bracelet (for 7-card stud), and he also became a champion of the first ever PCA Super High Roller tournament with a 100 000$ buy-in, having beaten the legendary Daniel Negreanu in the final heads-up and having earned 1 500 000$.
In the same 2011, Katchalov became a member of PokerStars Team Pro and stayed in the team until May 2016, representing Ukraine and playing with the patches of the poker room.
After leaving the PokerStars team, Kachalov continued to play poker and to popularize it as an intellectual sport. In addition, Eugene is engaged in business and is a sponsor of cyber sportsmen’s team.
Interesting facts about Eugene Katchalov:
- Eugene graduated from the University of New York (Stern School of Business) in 2003. He is a financier by training.
- Before Katchalov started to play poker professionally, he was a trader at the stock exchange.
- In the Soviet times Katchalov’s father (when Eugene was a child) earned money playing cards (despite such a game was illegal).
- After leaving the PokerStars Team, Eugene (along with his teammate Luca Pogano) created a cyber-sports team to play Hearthstone game - Team QLASH.
- In 2016, he played for the LA Sunset team in the GPL. Their team lost to the future champions of the league - "Montreal Nationals" in the playoffs at the pre-final stage of the competition.
- Eugene was one of the contenders for a role of a bachelor in Ukrainian TV show "The Bachelor", but he wasn’t approved.
- The probability to participate in "The Bachelor" instigated Katchalov to take care of himself. At that time, the poker player weighed over 100 kg but approximately in 1,5 years, Eugene lost 23 kg by training hard with the coach. It affected positively not only the appearance, but also the player’s wallet: as Katchalov admitted in one of the interviews in 2013 - he managed to win several bets the guy made with his friends.
- In 2015, the poker player made a proposal to Anna Selyukova - a winner of the "The Bachelor-4" show, whose he was seeing for several years. The girl said "yes". The couple's wedding took place in Kiev, in June 2018. For now, Eugene Katchalov and Anna Selyukova live for two countries: the USA and Ukraine.
- Katchalov has repeatedly won the WCOOP and the SCOOP championships at PokerStars.
- One of Eugene's best poker friends is French professional Bertrand "Elky" Grospellier.
- Katchalov does everything possible to legalize poker in Ukraine. He became a member of an Expert Council of the Ukrainian Gaming Industry Association, which was presented in the middle of November 2016.