| Bill Marczak reporting from Moscow
Cosmos Casino International Poker Tournaments, 27th Oct to 4th Nov
With an entry of $200,plus 57 re-buys & add-ons,the prizepool for tonite’s event was a healthy $28,600. Limit games are almost unknown here in Russia,so it wasn’t surprising to hear many locals say “raise the pot”,only to be informed that the limits were structured according to the size of the blinds.”Bendigo” Sloan was called upon to explain this fact during the evening on at least 5 occasions, & even with his able Russian assistant Olessia Lopatko translating,confusion was the order of the day,at least for the first hour or so. Nevertheless there were 7 of 9 Russians on the final table. Well-known European poker competitor Gary Bush of England ran out the eventual winner from the popular Moscow player Alex Leviev.
Leviev has featured prominently in tournaments in the past 12 months,including forays into European competition,which is an excellent achievement given that until about 12 months ago the only form of poker he had played was 5-card stud,Moscow style with a 32 card deck. I’ve played with Alex a lot in the past 12 months,but the game that really sticks in my mind is one that we played one night at Concord Card Casino in Vienna. Alex was raising about 80% of the pots pre-flop, & at one stage he had so many chips that they extended about 8 rows out by 10 across – at least 600 times the big blind,which was 400 Schillings.
Alex Kravchenko who finished 6th tonite has also done very well in tournaments in the past 2 years,& M.Tulchinsky, who won the pot limit Omaha here on Monday, has also travelled to European tournaments this year. Expect to hear a lot more about these 2 in the future.
As usual during these tournaments the live action has been really action packed every night,in particular the pot limit Omaha which has produced some unbelievable action. There was even a 5-card stud game here the other night which had the foreign players mesmerised – pots of $10,000 - $20,000 were frequent. The last hand of the evening saw a pair of Jacks winning a $28,000 pot. Wow!!!
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