By Lisa Yiasemides
WPT Russia continues at the beautiful Casino Sochi, as the tension builds now that some of the series’ biggest tournaments have begun.
Russian star Artur Martirosian has banked his first win of the festival after claiming the top spot in The Opener, while Aleksandr Pustovoy also won a side event after taking down the Turbo Super Stack last night.
Meanwhile, the Main Event and the High Roller are both underway, with the latter down to the final table. But you can read about both of those later on…first let’s start with the newest WPT winners.
The Opener
The tournament that got the entire series off the mark played to its conclusion last night. With four Day 1 flights to choose from, the three-day event gave players lots of play for their buy-in. There were also some big prizes available, after 290 hopefuls (including re-entries) each put in 825 CU/$784, creating a 239,250 CU/$227,714 prize pool.
Artur Martirosian was the one to go the distance, starting off the final table in fourth place but using his formidable skills to push to the top. He collected 43,760 CU*/$41,642 for the result, getting his WPT Russia campaign off to an excellent start. The Russian powerhouse has certainly made his presence known in the last two years, notching up numerous High Roller results on the live and virtual felts in that time.
Artur Martirosian
The last of his opposition was Iliya Yasnogorodskiy, who took the runner-up position. He collected 29,175 CU/$27,763 for his result. Narek Arsenyan (21,355 CU/$20,320) came third, while final-table chip leader Oleg Zakharov (15,840 CU/$15,072) fell in fourth place.
Mikhail Dianov (11,910 CU/$11,333) and Dmitriy Koptev (9,080 CU/$8,632) took the last two seats at the final table, denying Roman Lesko a place. He won 7,020 CU/$6,671 for placing 7th.
Anatolii Zyrin also ran deep, making it as far as 9th place, and the pro didn’t waste any time registering for Day 1a of the Main Event, which you can read more about a little later.
Turbo Big Stack
Next up is the Turbo Big Stack, which had a one-day structure and ran last night. The buy-in was 440 CU/$418 and a total of 119 entries put 52,360 CU/$49,820 into the pot.
The first hurdle players had to negotiate was the bubble, with 15 of the total field paid. Yuriy Semenov (780 CU/$741) managed to do just that, inching into the money in 15th place. Stepan Mikhno and Aleksandr Sazhinov managed to get a little further, banking 880 CU/$837 and 1,040 CU/$989 for 12th and 11th places respectively.
It took some time for players to reach the final six and Vadim Gayduk exited on the final table bubble. He banked 1,830 CU/$1,740 for doing so and his exit paved the way for Artur Khostyan (5,690 CU/$5,413), Danil Saltynyuk (4,180 CU/$3,977), Robert Faizrakhmanov (3,025/$2,877) and Igor Yumatov (2,310/$2,197) to pull up a chair at the final.
Lidiya Belyaeva was the last woman standing and she made it all the way to second place, before losing heads up to Aleksandr Pustovoy. Both players took a big chunk of the prize pool home, with Pustovoy’s win worth 11,940 CU/$11,361 and Belyaeva’s good for 8,160 CU/$7,762.
Main Event
The highly anticipated Main Event kicked off yesterday and 60 entries were logged by the end of late registration. Eight one-hour levels were on the clock and by the end, 30 still remained.
The fact that only half of the field was eliminated meant that there is a huge discrepancy between the biggest and the smallest stacks.
One of the most recognisable names in the competition is Anatolii Zyrin and he made a big impression on the day, collecting just shy of 200,00 by the end and nabbing himself a spot at the top of the chip counts after multiplying his 40,000-starting stack by five.
Anatolii Zyrin
There was quite the distance between Zyrin in first place, and Pavel Kovalenko (139,900), Vasily Yarkov (128,000), Igor Proschenko (126,500) and Anton Lysakov (126,200) who all made the top five.
Andrey Bondar (119,100), Yuriy Zaharov (110,700) and regular Aleksandr Merzhvinskiy (108,000) each built up stacks of over 100,000, while Vladimir Bozinovic (87,600) and Serafim Kovalevsky (84,500) took the last two top-ten spots.
The main event continues today, with Day 1b already underway and Days 1c and 1d will take place tomorrow, February 25, at 12 pm and 6 pm (local time).
The 3,500 CU/$3,328 buy-in event has already generated 210,000 CU/$199,688 for the prize pool and with three more starting flights to go, there is plenty of time for a huge prize pool to be built.
High Roller
With a buy in of 5,500 CU/$5,227, this is the biggest buy-in event of the tour. The only non-Russian still in contention is Timur Mussagambetov (824,000) and the Kazakhstani has a huge lead, returning with almost double the amount of chips that the second chip leader Vitaliy Strelchenok (431,000) has.
Stefan Prostorov (312,000) and Aleksey Savenkov (288,000) did enough to secure third and fourth places, while Artur Martirosian is still in the mix too with 275,000 chips. Kurdin Vasiliy starts behind with 270,000 but all that could change, with play already underway in the card room.
The total pot generated is 440,000 CU/$418,540. Of the 80 entries (including re-entries), just 10 were paid, and with only four busting before play was paused for the night – the majority of that prize pool is still up for grabs.
Egor Turubanov (7th – 16,110 CU/$15,318), Aleksey Zelentsov (8th – 13,485 CU/$), WPT Russia 2020 runner-up Vlada Stojanovic (9th – 11,890 CU/$11,310) and Maksim Pisarenko (10th – 11,890 CU/$11,310) were the four who saw a return on their investment before being eliminated. Meanwhile, defending champion Garik Tamasyan won’t do the double, as he was unable to progress past 15th place.
The six finalists are all in with a chance of winning up to 118,900 CU/$113,090 for first place, with all guaranteed at least 20,235CU/$19,256 for reaching 6th place.
The WPT reporting team will be back tomorrow with more updates on the latest action at Casino Sochi, while live reporting will begin on Friday when Day 2 of the Main Event gets underway. See you back here then.
*1 Casino unit = 70 Rubles