Home / Poker News August 2009 / EPT Kyiv – Day 4: Lykov leads final table
EPT Kyiv – Day 4: Lykov leads final table
Posted by: James Carter. - Sun, 2009-08-23 15:55
After a colorful 4 days of action at the Kyiv Sport Palace, complete with a power outage and some notable surprise attendees, the 296 player starting field of the first ever EPT event in the Ukraine has been reduced to the final 8.
Maxim Lykov had finished Day 2 in the provisional chip lead and he’s refused to relinquish his iron grip on the position since. He finished Day 3 in the lead as well and went on to preserve his advantage for the final table by finishing on top on Day 4 too. Though Germany’s Torsten Tent managed to take over the chip lead briefly during Day 4, Lykov eventually bounced back and built up a huge 2.6 million chip stack which gave him a more than 1 million chip advantage over his nearest foe.
Tent started his push early on Day 4, and managed to snatch the chip lead from Lykov. The latter fought back by building his stack to 1.5 million chips, leaving the German well behind. Compelled to make their do or die moves, the short stacks began fading away and dropping out of the game one by one. The first elimination of the day was a double one though, as Michele Limongi and Artem Litvinov both bit the dust at the hands of Nikita Lebedov.
By the time the 20th level was reached, only 20 survivors remained at the tables. Under continuous pressure, the short-stacks continued pushing all-in, looking for that tournament life saving double up. Some attempts were met with more success than others. Bernard Boutboul for instance managed to hang on and to advance thanks to surviving several all-ins. Michael Meyburg of Germany and Volodymyr Pilyavskyy accomplished the same feat.
Others in the meantime, on bigger stacks than the three players mentioned, bled to death in the fray. Germany’s Waldemar Kopyl dropped a huge pot on a bluff to Belarus’ Vadim Markushevski, who had made the nut straight.
American Andrew Malott knocked out Alex Fitzgerald first, before running into Alexander Dovzhenko of Ukraine. The two of them started the duel before the flop and the brawl spilt past the turn as Dovzhenko eventually shoved all-in. Malott made the call and showed two pairs (Aces and 4s) however Dovzhenko had made a set of Qs and the American was out.
After skillfully swinging his short-stack for a while, Frenchman Bernard Boutbol eventually found the path to the rail as well, in 12th place.
Alexey Maslov fell victim to Lykov’s stack building push in 10th, setting the stage for the final 9 players to duke it out.
As the final 9 was reached, the players came together to a single table, with Dovzhenko in the lead. Lykov first lifted a huge pot off Torsten Tent cementing his chip lead this way.
The final elimination of the day was that of Michael Meyburg, whose pocket 7s failed to catch up with Tolokolnnikov’s A,10 which proceeded to catch a pair of 10s on the flop.
