Russian poker player “YmbertoZhukov” was going about his daily business while POWERFEST was running when he stumbled across an Instagram post from the partypoker pro Anatoly “NL_Profit” Filatov.
The post gave details about the KO a Pro promotion that ran during the third and final week of the $60 million guaranteed festival; it was the final time the promotion would run. On this occasion, anyone from Russia who busted Filatov from $16.50 POWERFEST #136-L: $30K Gtd PKO event would get their hands on a $1,050 ticket for one of the POWERFEST Championship Events.
YmbertoZhukov hadn’t played on partypoker for a while, but saw the value in this promotion so logged into his account to make a deposit. He never had to deposit because, when he fired up his account, he discovered a $5.50 ticket in there. A little grinding later and YmbertoZhukov turned that $5.50 into $40, more than enough to get involved in the KO a Pro promotion.
The rest, as they say, is history.
The biggest tournament of YmbertoZhukov’s life
After busting Filatov from the $16.50 POWERFEST #136-L: $30K Gtd PKO event, YmbertoZhukov was now the proud owner of a $1,050 POWERFEST Championship ticket and was ready to play in the biggest tournament of his life.
“I was very nervous from the start of the $1,000 event. I never played such a high buy-in tournament,” he told the partypoker blog. “My range is usually from $3 to $22. I take a walk in a park with my kid to calm my nerves. My goal was to win some money, so I was trying to get few bounties or get to the minimum cash.”
The Poker Gods were shining down on YmbertoZhukov and he navigated his way through the shark-infested waters of the big buy-in event and eventually found himself at the final table where he was guaranteed to walk away with at least $7,169 plus four-figures worth of bounty payments, all from a free $5.50 ticket.
One by one the players at the final table busted, YmbertoZhukov found himself in the final four places and he was now guaranteed $30,498 for his efforts.
No deal!
“When there was four of us, I tried to suggest a deal, but nipa3p3 was silent and imPlayCash said: ‘Don’t even dream about it’.”
The player known as “pakzoo” busted in fourth-place followed by “imPlayCash” in third-place to leave YmbertoZhukov heads-up against nipa3p3, who is the talented Pavel Plesuv the talented Moldovan who finished as runner-up to Viktor “Isildur1” Blom in the partypoker LIVE MILLIONS Germany Main Event. It was a battle that YmbertoZhukov would ultimately lose, although the fact he turned a free ticket into $69,418 from the main prize pool and $5,768 worth of bounties for a combined score of $75,186 makes him a winner in our eyes.
“I was the one in heads-up and at some point I even had the lead and was one card away from taking it, but he catch the flush on the river and doubled up. And after that he outplayed me, but it is not a shame to lose to top regular,” said a gracious YmbertoZhukov.
YmbertoZhukov’s poker plans
YmbertoZhukov was full of praise for Filatov and the work he does as a partypoker ambassador. He is also looking forward to facing Filatov at the felt if he decides to play the EAPT Grand Final in Sochi, Russia during October.
“I am so grateful for what Anatoly Filatov doing to make poker more popular in Russia. If it was not for him I would never had a fantastic moment like this. I won $75,178 and spent $0 to get it. I don’t think I would make big purchases. I am a family man, so I will use it for the future. Also I would love to go to Sochi and play in big live event. May be I go and play EAPT Grand Final in October.”
Let’s hope YmbertoZhukov does head to Sochi in October and puts together yet another deep run.
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