It took Vladzislau Hladkovski a little under eight hours to take down the €230 TonyBet Open-Faced Chinese Progressive Pineapple tournament after a deal for €1,890.
Hladkovski recovered from being the first casualty of the day to take full advantage of his second bullet to claim the title, prize money and TonyBet trophy.
There were a solid half a dozen players at the start of play, with faces from the various Day 1s of the PokerNews Cup present in the field including eMKey and Paulina Rimkute, but it took until the third level of the day until we saw any one player make some advances well above starting stack.
By Level 4 we had already had a couple of eliminations, including the aforementioned Hladkovski, Lars HellmuthchiKKita banAAna and eventual third-place finisher Andrei Ilin.
There was strong play throughout the day, but the hand-of-the-day has to go to Sergii Kyslyi, who returned from Fantasy Land with a grin from ear to ear as he showed Royal Flush-Full House-Aces to soar into the chiplead and eliminate both Paulina Rimkute and Anja Haberger.
Late registrants Sebastian Langrock and Martin Kabrhel joined the field, with both players firing two bullets, but only Langrock securing a spot in the final six.
Langrock would go on to bust in fourth place leaving Vladzislau Hladkovski, Andrei Ilin, Alexander Dovzhenko and Sergii Kyslyi to battle it out. Kyslyi was the shortest of the four of them, but there was to be no fairytale comeback. In his pursuit of Kings up top he fouled to leave the other three to play on.
But there was no play. The final three players agreed a three-way deal with chipleader Vladzislau Hladkovski taking the title and trophy by virtue of being the chipleader when the deal was struck.
Position
Name
Country
Payout (after threeway deal)
1
Vladzislau Hladkovski
Belarus
€1,890
2
Alexander Dovzhenko
Ukraine
€1,621
3
Andrei Ilin
Russia
€1,428
Meanwhile, the PokerNews Cup is down to its final eight players, who will resume tomorrow to play down to a winner. Stay tuned to PokerNews for all the action from the final table.
With 16 minutes left for late registration and re-entries, King's casino regular Martin Kabrhel has joined the field. He is sat in a three-way match between him Petteri Voutilainen and Sergii Kyslyi.
We didn't see the hands, but what we did see was Kabrhel already handing over chips to both of his opponents having clearly been scooped by the two of them first hand, after he fouled.
On his second hand he was running an ambitious Flush-Straight-Trips play, needing a heart and either a seven or queen to avoid fouling and pick up a huge chunk of chips. He hit the heart, but sadly for him his other two cards didn't help him. He immediately re-entered after lasting just two hands.
Sadly for chiKKita banAAna, his self-confessed first foray into OFC tournaments has ended in despair after being eliminated shortly after coming back from the break.
Tablemates Denis Onder Yavuz and Morten Petersen had fought a running battle with the charismatic and energetic player, but you get the feeling that table might be a little quieter without him for company.
Also eliminated is Andrei Ilin who fell at a table playing heads-up against Chris Heberger.
Today the €230 TonyBet OFC Progressive Pineapple tournament gets underway at 5p.m. local time here at King's Casino. It carries a €5,000 guarantee and gives players the opportunity to swap two or four cards for 13!
The event is single re-entry event and sees a format which is not often spread in a tournament format across the world. In this tournament players will receive 20,000 in chips. Levels are 45 minutes and that is where the cost of points will increase.
Back in 2015 TonyBet Poker Ambassador Isabelle Mercier became the first-ever Open-Face Chinese Poker Progressive Pineapple world champion in Prague, outlasting a field of 108 entries to take home the €10,189 first prize.
After 12 hours of play Mercier beat a field featuring Jason Mercier, Max Pescatori and others, to collect the first-place prize as well as the honours. In the final heads-up battle Mercier defeated Germany’s Frank Gohletr.
Speaking then about her experience at the second OFC World Cup, Mercier highlighted the great differences that exist between playing OFC poker online and live.
"I am used to playing OFC on TonyBet Poker online all the time," Mercier said. "There, you don't really need to count: you just trust the software. You just count the odds and the software goes 'cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching' before moving onto the next hand."
Stay tuned to PokerNews for all the action from this fast-paced and exciting tournament.
