Out of 916 players, only 11 returned for the final day of the 2018 PartyPoker Live Millions Russia $4,700 Main Event. The champion was to be determined at the Sochi Casino and Resort. At the end of it all, it was Anatoly Filatov who lifted the trophy, and this was a couple of days after his birthday. One of the legends and fellow countryman that he defeated was Gor Kazaryan, and this was at his home soil. 

He believes this was a great beginning of his new year after his birthday that he celebrated on 8th August. He is still in dismay after he won the tournament which he never thought he would ace. 

Before this gambling.site poker mega tournament, Filatov had record winnings of more than $2.1 million, and this included two victories in events of his sponsor, Partypoker. In 2017, he had come close to the Caribbean Poker Party where he finished second with a win of $165,000. He was also on 11th place in the PartyPoker Millions Grand Final Barcelona €10,300 High Roller and was seventh place in the PartyPoker Millions North America C$10,300 finale. 

Earlier in a podcast, Filatov has stated how amazing this win would have been for him. Even though things were not easy for him on the final day, he still managed to become the ultimate winner. He was facing great pressure from Gleb Tremzin, Konstantin Uspenskii, Kazaryan and Viktor Khodorenko. 

With 11 players returning to the final, thirty minutes were enough to determine the unofficial final table of the last nine. Ekaterina Fedyaeva had the shortest stack among the players, and he raised out of the small blind with jack-ten suited. Khodorenko moved all in from the big blind with ace-eight suited of spades and Fedyaeva called off to find no help on a king-high board. The next player to be eliminated was Chernikov who was in plenty of hands earlier on and check-shoved a three-way flop with bottom pair and the second nut flush draw. 

At the final table, there were seven Russians, one Belarusian and Malaysian who went ahead to miss out on the official table of the final eight. After the games started again, Partypoker’s Ambassador, Filatov started at a high notch and was responsible for eliminating Uspenskii in 8th place. 

Galitskiy got into the final day as the bigger stacks but did not do much. At the end of it, his three-bet all in with ace-queen and initial raiser Filatov snap-called with pocket kings to hold up on a queen-high board and send the second opponent in a row to the rail. Tremzin who is also an accomplished poker professional was able to spin up his short stack and was able to secure some pay jumps, but he ended up in sixth place. On the way to the official final table, the dominating chip leader was Khondorenko, but some of his moves backfired, and he ended up as the fourth place finisher. The player from Belarus made three-bet all in with ace-seven, and again it was Filatov who dealt the final blow after four-bet jamming with pocket queens in the big blind. 

The heads-up play lasted for about 80 minutes, and the lead changed a couple of times without a showdown. A setup hand then determined the champion after Kazaryan flopped top two pair with queen-nine and Filatov turned the nut straight with jack-ten of hearts. All the chips were in the middle, and a blank ace led Filatov and his friends in celebration.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 15th, 2018 at 1:10 pm and is filed under Poker News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

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