Timur Margolin Leads Merit Poker Main Event Day 1a
The three-time bracelet winner bagged 1.76 million chips after a 216-entry opening flight, with 32 players advancing and more starting days still to come.
Timur Margolin led Day 1a of the $5,500 Merit Poker Main Event at the Merit Royal Diamond Hotel Casino & Spa, bagging 1,760,000 chips after a 216-entry opening flight. Thirty-two players made it through to Day 2, and each survivor locked up a payday and a seat in the next stage.
According to PokerNews, the event is part of the Merit Poker Noir Series and carries a $3,000,000 guaranteed prize pool. Players started with 100,000 chips, late registration stayed open until the start of Level 11 in each flight, and unlimited reentries were allowed.
Margolin, a three-time bracelet winner, took his seat in the second level and got busy early. He built chips by calling down an opponent with ace-high, then moved past seven figures during one of the final levels before winning another pot with king-high.
The pack behind him was close. Joris Ruijs finished second with 1,560,000, Jay O’Leary was third with 1,525,000, Dmitrii Kravchenko bagged 1,495,000, and Gilles Simon ended on 1,490,000. Merijn van Rooij and Oleg Silin both finished with 1,355,000.
Kravchenko also had one of the bigger late-night moments. Near the end, he flopped a full house against Christopher Rossos’s trip sevens after five players saw the flop, and the clean runout sent Rossos out while Kravchenko climbed the leaderboard. He was also trying to go one step further than his runner-up finish in the Merit Poker Cup just a few days earlier.
There was no need for hand-for-hand play at the end, because John Doe K and Ravid Garbi were eliminated in quick succession. Play stopped with 21 minutes left in Level 17, at blinds of 10,000/20,000 with a 20,000 big blind ante.
The first casualty came on the very first hand, when Ivan Zabiyakin flopped a straight against Andrei Mashinistov’s top pair and flush draw, only for Mashinistov to make his flush on the turn. Shortly after the dinner break, Xiaosheng Zheng won a flip with pocket jacks against Felipe Ketzer’s ace-king, and Ketzer was sent to the rail.
Other notable survivors included Vitaly Kononenko with 585,000, Cristinel Dumitru with 475,000, Huseyin Akgul with 450,000, Andrei Mashinistov with 325,000, Konstantin Voronin with 245,000, and Halil Tasyurek with 210,000. Alexander Sokolovsky was the short stack among those who advanced, bagging 40,000, about two big blinds.
Day 1b was set for noon the next day, with Day 1c and Day 1d scheduled for Tuesday, Aug. 4. All surviving players from the four flights were due back for Day 2 on Wednesday, Aug. 5, when the levels increase to 60 minutes.
