Marat Shafigullin Tops Day 1c of the Main Event; Sofia Lovgren Advances to Day 2
The third starting day of the 2019 888poker LIVE Sochi Main Event turned out to be the biggest one yet thanks to 135 entries, which boosted the overall field size to 318 entries in total. In cooperation with Poker Club Management and Casino Sochi in the mountain region of Krasnaya Polyana, the flagship event in the first-ever 888poker LIVE festival on Russian soil features a buy-in of 62,160 RUB (~ $888) and a guaranteed prize pool of 35,000,000 RUB (~ $500,000).
After 10 levels of 40 minutes each, it was Marat Shafigullin that pulled ahead of the rest by quite a margin after steamrolling through the field and sending several players to the rail. Shafigullin claimed 373,900 to his name, the second-biggest stack of all the Day 1 survivors thus far. Second in chips after Day 1c is Evgeniy Shibaldin (277,700), closely followed by Latvia's Aleksandrs Natalcenko (231,500), and Anton Badulin (226,400).
Other notables that made the cut include Rustam Khamatgareev (203,000), Vyacheslav Bernikov (171,800), Eduard Barsegyan (144,300), Andrey Danilyuk (140,000), Fraser MacIntyre (101,200), Anvar Muratov (71,600), and Pavel Kovalenko (65,000).
Sofia Lovgren was also among those to take another shot at the action after she had been eliminated on Day 1a and the 888poker ambassador from Sweden quickly doubled her stack after sitting down. Things didn't go as smooth after her table change, but Lovgren scored a late double with kings versus aces when she flopped a full house. Lovgren bagged up an above-average stack of 122,200.
More than half the field was sent to the rail, however, and among those to run out of chips were Dmitry Vitkind, Aleksey Istomin, Vangelis Kaimakamis, Viktor Kudinov, Mikhail Zamyatin, Ruslan Mityaev, Igor Rybak, and Sergey Pichugin. Mityaev shot to the top of the leaderboard just before the first break of the day when his kings held up against queens and eights to send Andrey Osipov and Artem Lukyanov to the rail, but Mityaev was unable to keep up the momentum and fell short of making Day 2.
Several 888poker online qualifiers also entered the competition including Manuel Torrents Avalos and Eduardo Da Rocha, but both were among those to bust. Torrents Avalos four-bet jammed with tens into the pocket aces of Anton Badulin and Da Rocha was ousted just shy of bagging and tagging when his top pair was no good against flopped top two pair.
After a short break, Lovgren then returned to her seat for more poker action in the High Roller. The most expensive event of the tournament schedule in Sochi comes with a buy-in of 132,160 RUB ($1,888 ) and Day 1 played a total of six levels of 40 minutes each. Out of 41 entries, 28 players made it to Day 2 including Lovgren (72,000), fellow 888poker ambassador Vivian Saliba (45,500) and Daria Feshchenko (17,500). They were all seated on the same table for the second of four tournament days, which is scheduled to play another six levels to give all participants the chance to run deep in the Main Event as well.
Leading the High Roller field into Day 2 is Artem Kresyak with 187,200, which was good enough for 187 big blinds at 500-1,000 and a big blind ante of 1,000 in the first level of the day. Other notables in contention were Viktor Kudinov, Aleksandr Chernikov, Karen Arutyunyan, Dmitry Vitkind, and Evgeniy Nekrasov. Michael Mizrachi also jumped into the action as well and the late registration for the High Roller will remain open for the first 14 levels, two levels into Day 3.
The penultimate starting day of the Main Event has also commenced at 8 p.m. local time as well and features levels of 25 minutes each. All those that fail to secure a seat for Day 2 have another shot as of 10 a.m. the next morning in the turbo heat 1e with levels of 15 minutes and can also enter and re-enter for the first four 60-minute levels as of 1.30 p.m.
A short recap of the remaining two starting days and the respective chip counts of Day 1d and 1e will be published prior to the restart of Day 2, along with the seat draw of all survivors.