Sarkarov Comes From Behind to Finish Front of the Pack with Nine Left
He began the day with little more than starting stack but that didn’t stop Elvin Sarkarov from picking off the competition to finish top of the leaderboard as the final nine have been decided following the end of Day 2, here at Casino Sochi.
Pete Chen is best placed to challenge Sarkarov, bagging 666,000 for second place and bringing a host of experience with him. Rushad Iskandarov (521,000) who returns in third place will also be hot on their tails. Team PokerStars Pro and PSPC Champion Ramon Colillas is still in the running and not to be ignored despite finishing as the second shortest stack.
There were 33 players who made it through Day 1 yesterday and as late registration ended when the claxon sounded today, another five players made the most of that opportunity, bringing the number of players in contention to 38. A total of 84 runners generated a very attractive prizepool of ₽28,518,000 ($439,142) and first place will receive ₽7,840,000 ($120,747).
All eyes will be on the top prize of ₽7,840,000 ($120,590) but Sarkarov is the man to catch after spinning the 66,000 chips that he started the day with up to 1,049,000. He eliminated a string of players in the second half of the day, including Leonid Bilokur who finished in 13th, Artem Vezhenkov who was the unfortunate bubble boy and Arseniy Karmatskiy who scraped into the money but couldn’t progress any further than a mincash for 11th place. In fact, the only player in the last five that didn’t bust to Sarkarov, was Oleg Titov, who was eliminated in 10th, just shy of the final table, by Rushad Iskandarov.
There were plenty of other big names to fall along the way, Denis Timofeev, Gor Kazaryan, Maksim Panyak, Wenling Gao, Ept National Champion Yury Masliankou, Oleg Vasylchenko, Petr Bartagov, Andrey Kotelnikov, Anton Yakuba, Aditya Sushant, Vadim Lipovka and Andrey Bondar were all eliminated outside of the money.
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| Seat | Player | Chips |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Elvin Sarkarov | 1,049,000 |
| 2 | Pete Chen | 666,000 |
| 3 | Daniil Kiselev | 137,000 |
| 4 | Rushad Iskandarov | 521,000 |
| 5 | Valery Yantsevich | 326,000 |
| 6 | Sergey Kolyasnikov | 447,000 |
| 7 | Maksim Bukreev | 496,000 |
| 8 | Irshat Shaykhov | 409,000 |
| 9 | Ramon Colillas | 150,000 |
and there was a chorus of laughter as Sarkarov hit the straight. It was all over by the 
turn and the 
on the river was redundant. We lose Vezhenkov just outside of the money. Vezhenkov took it all in his stride though, appearing to get some enjoyment from the hand, despite it bringing his tournament to an end.
down. Sarkarov bet the river and snap-called when Vezhenkov set him all in.
and the last woman in the field is out.
and Yantsevich scooped the lot for a monstrous lead in the counts now. Meanwhile, we imagine Gor Kazaryan is wishing he didn't make such a big lay down as he would have quadrupled his short stack.
