Aleksandr Merzhvinskiy Wins PokerStars Festival Sochi Main Event for $133,951
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Aleksandr Merzhvinskiy came out on top of 699 entries to be crowned the 2017 PokerStars Festival Sochi Main Event Champion, taking the trophy and first place prize money of 7,700,000 RUB (US$133,951).
The third and final day of the Main Event saw 27 players return to play to a winner and Merzhvinskiy began the day with a commanding chip lead, holding 2,599,000 compared to his nearest rival Serafim Kovalevskiy who had 1,293,000.
Merzhvinskiy was on the front foot all day, constantly driving the action and pressurising his opponents. It was far from an easy ride though, and at one point his small blind shove with 
ran into the 
of Kirill Denisenko in the big blind and he had to set about rebuilding his stack.
There was no let-up in the pace of eliminations all day until they reached the unofficial final table of nine where the action did slow down as ranges tightened up as the remaining players desperately tried to make it into the annals of PokerStars history.
Eventually though Vadim Lipovka shoved from late position with 
and couldn’t improve against the 
of Valentin Zolotilov.
The elimination from eight to heads-up were again fairly quick with average stacks hovering around the 30 to 40 big blinds and most bust outs were fairly standard flips.
Once Alexsandr Denisov and Merzhvinskiy had reached heads-up they paused the clock to look at ICM numbers but quickly decided they didn’t want to deal.
It didn’t take long for Denisov to equal up the stacks though and it looked like they were settling in for a marathon heads-up battle as at one point Denisov limp-folded to a raise preflop and showed the which had Merzhvinskiy shaking his head.
The small ball looked set to continue until Merzhvinskiy set the trap by limping with 
and calling the shove from Denisov holding 
. It was all over by 12:30 a.m and Merzhvinskiy was the champ.
2017 PokerStars Festival Sochi Final Result
| Position | Name | Country | Prize in RUB | Prize in $ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Aleksandr Merzhvinskiy | Russian Federation | 7,700,000 RUB | $133,951 |
| 2 | Alexsandr Denisov | Russian Federation | 4,700,000 RUB | $81,762 |
| 3 | Nikita Myshkin | Russian Federation | 3,350,000 RUB | $58,277 |
| 4 | Alexander Shlyakhov | Russian Federation | 2,600,000 RUB | $45,230 |
| 5 | Valentin Zolotilov | Russian Federation | 2,000,000 RUB | $34,792 |
| 6 | Andrey Kotelnikov | Russian Federation | 1,560,000 RUB | $27,138 |
| 7 | Mikhail Zamyatin | Russian Federation | 1,101,800 RUB | $19,167 |
| 8 | Kirill Denisenko | Belarus | 770,000 RUB | $13,395 |
