Maxim Babko raised and called the shove of Petr Bartagov for just over 12 big blinds, turning over . Bartagov had the slightly inferior pocket pair in and found no help on a board of .
There was a full board of in a blind-on-blind confrontation between Gary Banks, who came into the day third in chips, and his opponent Andrey Berinov.
Banks checked to his opponent who bet 700,000 into a pot of around a million chips. Banks then check-raised to 1,950,000. Berinov thought for a while before calling.
Banks rechecked his hole cards before mucking face down, allowing Berinov to take down the pot uncontested.
Tarkan Karadas and Martin Weiemann were briefly chatting on the rail and both confirmed that they were out. Weiemann had to give up two hands and was left with six big blinds. He three-bet from the button against an open-raise by Igor Devkin and Aleksandr Shuvalov called in the big blind, as did Devkin.
Ultimately, Weiemann stood no chance with against the pocket kings of Shuvalov.
Pavel Ignatov has also been eliminated. He was all in with ace-queen and Pavel Fedchan called with . The board ran out to provide a flush for Fedchan and that was it for Ignatov.
Nursultan Abilkassym moved all in with and was drawing dead on the turn after table neighbor Zdenek Mach's scored the first knockout of the day.
A few tables over, fellow short stack Viktor Kudinov was the next to fall. Aleksandr Merzhvinskiy opened to 160,000 and Kudinov shoved. Gurgen Mkhitaryan from one seat over called, but folded to the 1.2 million reraise by Merzhvinsky.
Kudinov showed and had two live cards against the of Merzvhinskiy, however the nine-high board provided no help.
Welcome to Day 3 of the partypoker LIVE MILLIONS Russia Main Event!
Today 227 players will come back to the Sochi Casino & Resort to continue on their quest to secure a slice of the $5m guaranteed prizepool, and they will be lead by Sergey Verkhoturov, who is the only player over 11 million in chips.
The money bubble is expected to burst in the first or second level of the day, and a min-cash in this record-breaking tournament, the largest in Russian poker history, will earn players 5,800 Casino Sochi Units (CSU) or approximately $5,000.
If they were to go on to take down this monster 999-man tournament, they would walk away with 1,160,000 CSU or $1,000,000.
Here are the full list of payouts:
Place
Prize in Casino Units
~ Prize in USD
1
1,160,000
$1,000,000
2
696,000
$600,000
3
464,000
$400,000
4
348,000
$300,000
5
232,000
$200,000
6
174,000
$150,000
7
121,800
$105,000
8
81,200
$70,000
9
58,000
$50,000
10-12
46,400
$40,000
13-15
40,600
$35,000
16-18
34,800
$30,000
19-27
29,000
$25,000
28-36
26,100
$22,500
37-45
23,200
$20,000
46-54
20,300
$17,500
55-63
17,400
$15,000
64-72
14,500
$12,500
73-99
11,600
$10,000
100-126
8,700
$7,500
127-161
5,800
$5,000
The plan for today is to play seven levels, and here is the structure:
Level
Clock (mins)
Small Blind
Big Blind
Button Ante
15
75
40,000
80,000
80,000
16
75
50,000
100,000
100,000
17
75
60,000
120,000
120,000
18
75
80,000
160,000
160,000
19
75
100,000
200,000
200,000
20
75
125,000
250,000
250,000
21
75
150,000
300,000
300,000
As well as the Main Event there is also a $1m guaranteed 8-Max side event with starting days at noon 6 p.m. local time for players to try their hand at for only $2,500+200.
Stay tuned to PokerNews.com for all the live updates as the Main Event continues.