Urbanovich Leads Last 10 Into Final Day of the Open
After starting as one of the shortest stack, partypoker ambassador Dzmitry Urbanovich shot up to the top of the leader board and is in prime position to claim the top prize of RUB10,800,000 in the RUB60,000+6,000 Open (~$1,050). The first major event of the 2018 partypoker LIVE MILLIONS Russia poker festival at the Sochi Casino and Resort attracted a field of exactly 1,000 entries and the top 119 spots were paid.
On Day 3, a total of 73 players returned to the tables of the new main poker room and a lot of big names were still in contention. Among them were Konstantin Puchkov, 2017 partypoker LIVE MILLIONS Russia Main Event finalist Anatolii Zyrin, Vitaly Lunkin, Tatiana Barausova, Oleksii Kravchuk, Dragos Trofimov and MILLIONS champion Aleksandr Gofman. All of them busted throughout the day and Kravchuk entered Day 1A of the Main Event to claim the biggest stack. Gofman signed up for the Triton Poker High Roller and bagged up, but will return with just nine big blinds for the respective Day 2.
Puchkov flopped bottom two pair against the top pair of Georgi Shkulukhia, who turned the better two pair with ace-nine. Just before the end of the day, Tatiana Barausova was ousted by Orkhan Allahverdyev. She three-bet small preflop with 
and called a bet on a king-high flop before getting it in on the 
turn with a gutshot. Allahverdyev called with 
for top pair and held up.
Urbanovich won several big pots that propelled him to the lead, such as a flush over flush against Grair Nazaryan. The very same opponent then used six time bank extensions to fold pocket queens face up preflop when Urbanovich five-bet all in, and that capped off a very successful day for the partypoker ambassador.
All remaining ten finalists have RUB510,000 locked up for their efforts and the winner takes home RUB10,800,000. Action has recommenced at 12 p.m. local time with two five-handed tables and blinds of 1,200,000/2,500,000 with a button ante of 2,500,000. The chip counts of the final 10 can be found below:
| Player | Country | Chip Count | Big Blinds |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dzmitry Urbanovich | Poland | 169,100,000 | 68 |
| Dmitriy Shutenko | Russia | 144,000,000 | 58 |
| Denis Kushnerov | Russia | 142,000,000 | 57 |
| Valeriy Avanesyan | Russia | 124,800,000 | 50 |
| Orkhan Allahverdiyev | Azerbaijan | 105,100,000 | 42 |
| Sedrak Bagdasaryan | Russia | 97,600,000 | 39 |
| Kirill Agapov | Russia | 70,800,000 | 28 |
| Eugene Galakhov | Russia | 63,900,000 | 26 |
| Mikhail Aleksandrov | Russia | 45,200,000 | 18 |
| Rufat Bekhbudov | Russia | 29,600,000 | 12 |
A recap of the final day will be posted at the end of the night, and the live updates in Russian can be found on the Russian mypartypokerlive website.