The $5,300 buy-in Main Event saw 1,320 entries.
The winner was Gilles Simon.
The 24-year-old representative of the Netherlands has recently become a frequent visitor to our social media reviews. Speaking under the Twitter handle Ghilleyyy, he led the fight against unscrupulous players who took advantage of the shortcomings of GGPoker software.
Gilles first came to attention when he received a Platinum Pass from PokerStars in 2019 for winning the Dare To Stream streamer promotion. Since then, TaxationIsTheft (“Simon’s anarchist” nickname on PokerStars) has given up streaming, but he began to play much more expensively and even won one of the WCOOP series tournaments this year.
On the final day of the main tournament, Gilles advanced with a chip leading stack of 40 blinds, only slightly behind him were Halil Tasyurek from Turkey (39 blinds) and our Nikita Kuznetsov (37). A total of seven players remained in the game.
For Nikita, the final table started poorly; already at the first level he lost half his stack, but quickly doubled with against future champion and returned to the leading group.
Simon, with a stack of 15 blinds, was on the verge of elimination, but he also immediately doubled up against Jose Sanchez from Spain ( > ). And then in two hands, he eliminated Nikita in 6th place.
At the 125k/250k level, Nikita limped on the button with AJo, Simon on the SB with raised 2.2 million from a 4.5 million stack and called the all-in. The flop came with a seven.
A couple of hands later, Simon and the kings opened with a min-raise from UTG, Nikita shoved in four million with a pair of fours.
For 6th place, Kuznetsov received $211,850.
Simon became a big chip leader, but several unsuccessful plays and optimistic calls dropped him to the middle of the chip counts. In one of the hands, he called the river with Q-high.
At some point, it seemed that no one would stop the Italian Andrea Dato that evening, despite the fact that he spent 80% of the final table with the shortest stack.
However, then everything turned upside down. Dato, who voiced all his bets and actions, for which he received the nickname “Announcer” from commentators, knocked out the respectable Turk Halil Tasyurek (KJo>AKo) in 4th place, and the charismatic Spaniard Jose Sanchez (KJo>Q6o) in 3rd place, who, before poker, was the lead singer of a rap group called Latin Hydra.
Heads-up Dato started with a lead of 66 blinds to 30. However, in one of the first hands he lost half his stack when he was dealt K2o against KTo on the K-high board. After this, Dato never recovered, and the tournament soon ended.
The Main Event was by far the largest in terms of prizepool, with $6.4 million up for grabs. Second was the Multi-Day High Roller with a $10,300 buy-in. That event had 407 entries, and the prizepool was almost $4 million.
Ilya Pavlov became the champion .
23 players made it to the final day, Dario Sammartino was in the lead (111bb), Pavlov was in 9th place with 49 blinds. Immediately after the two-table redraw, they played one of the key pots of the entire tournament.
At 15,000/30,000 Dario opened on HJ and called Ilya's 3-bet on CO. On the flop Dario check-raised. On the turn Ilya called a bet of a third of the pot, and on the river he pushed. Sammartino couldn't fold and looked at .
Ilya with a stack of 2.7 million became the chip leader and soon eliminated Dario in 11th place. Sammartino in the small blind played a limp push for 30 blinds with A9s, Pavlov in the BB did not fold KQs and caught the queen on the river.
After Dmitry Yurasov was eliminated in 10th place, the players moved to one table, Ilya at that moment had 103 blinds, and his closest pursuer, Sergi Reixach, had 68.
At the very beginning of the final table, Pavlov eliminated Nariman Yaghmai from Iran and Estonian regular Markkos Ladev, but then bluffed more than a million in a big pot against Reixach.
At 30,000/60,000 Pavlov opened with HJ for 125,000 and Sergi defended the big blind.
Flop Reixach check-called for 175,000.
Turn , Reixach led to 115,000 and called the raise to 525,000.
Turn , Ilya bet 500,000 (he had ), the opponent did not fold .
Russian players Dmitry Nazarov ($123,100) and Danil Rafikov ($160,100) took 7th and 6th places.
In the top five, Pavlov doubled up against Reixach when he made a flush against two pair with A8s on the turn.
Left with a stack of 17 blinds, the Spaniard shoved with A8o and was unable to beat Ilya's , eliminating him in 4th place.
Pavlov entered the top three with a stack of 154 blinds; his opponents, Hwany Lee from Korea and Selahaddin Bedir from Turkey, had 50 between them. It was all over very quickly.
Left with a stack of five blinds, Lee in the big blind was forced to call Ilya's all-in with Q5o. Pavlov shoved 53o from the button and made a straight on the river.
In the final hand of the tournament, Bedir moved all-in with a pair of deuces, Pavlov looked at the aces and made an instant call.
On the same day, he won a $2,100 6-max tournament.
Valeriy Pak, competing under the flag of Belarus, won one of the most popular tournaments – $2,200 Eureka Highroller with 1,444 entries.
After a deal in the top three, Valeriy received $338,460.
Also winning at the series was Yakov Onuchin (1st place in PLO for $5,200 brought him $119k) and Nikita Voznesensky (chopped heads-up hyper-turbo for $1k).
Mikhail Zavoloka became the champion in the $1,650 Mystery Bounty. Without taking into account the bounties, he won $144k.
In total, three mystery bounty tournaments were played in Cyprus.
In the first days of the series, Alexander Girs from Belarus and Oleg Semenov from Lithuania (according to other sources from the UAE) chopped heads-up in the Mystery Bounty Event. Alexander added $110k in bounty to the prize, including a maximum of $50k. Oleg's envelopes brought him an additional $65k.
The $3,000 Mystery bounty was won by Quan Zhou.
The finalist of the high roller tournament, Dmitry Nazarov, finished third. Alexander Shylko took a modest 49th place, but pulled out one of the top bounties.
Azamat Tulepbergenov from Kazakhstan became the only two-time champion of the series. He won the $2k NLHE and finished in the top three in the $1k NLHE.
Aleksejs Ponakovs won the one-day $25,000 high roller tournament. There were only 20 entries in the tournament, so the first prize was less than 10 buy-ins.
In a similar competition with 16 entries, Aleksejs took 4th place, and in heads-up, Adrian Mateos beat Gia Iakobishvili.
Toward the end of the series, in the final high roller tournament, Albert Dacher beat Mikita Badziakouski heads-up. Artur Martirosian was eliminated on the direct bubble, and Gia was two players short of the money. Moreover, he made two entries, but this did not stop him from finishing the day in the black. Throughout the tournament, he and Daher amused themselves by betting on the color of the flop. Gia chose red, Albert chose black, sometimes the amounts reached $20,000, and in the end, Daher admitted to PokerNews reporters that he counted out $152,000 to his opponent.
Not all expensive tournaments in Cyprus were limited to just two tables. In the first days of the series, the $25k tournament attracted 59 entries. Alexander Tkatschew, representing Austria, won it, and Artur Martirosian took 3rd place.
A couple of days later, in a one-day tournament with the same buy-in, Artur lost heads-up to Lithuanian Paulius Plausinaitis, and scored a mincash in another. But the ending of the series did not work out at all for our high roller, and he had several bubbles.
