Pavel Shirsikov has won the Inaugural PokerStars Championship Sochi in 2017. The 30-year-old poker pro managed to grab the title and a solid first prize of $514,895. There are only 3 other Russians that have managed to win a major PokerStars event but Shirsikov is the first to do achieve that in his homeland.

Russians On The Rise

Russians naturally dominated the final table of the tournament. There were six of them, accompanied by only three players from other countries. Lavrentiy Ni from Kazakhstan finished in 5th place and collected $151,272. His fellow countryman Daniyar Aubakirov took the 7^th place and claimed $86,671. Seyed Ghavam from Iran did even better and finished third which brought him $235,949.

Grand Finale

Shirsikov became the chip leader on day 3 and almost kept this position until the final table. He eventually entered this phase with the 2^nd best stack. In the final table, there were only 163 hands before the title was claimed.

The la    st one of them was between Shirsikov and the well-known Russian pro-Vladimir Troyanovskiy. He initially complete from the small blind when Shirshikov went all in. The bet was called and it was time for the final showdown. Shirshikov was holding A6 while Troyanovskiy had K7. The eventual champion had a slight advantage that did hold after the board didn’t help his opponent.

Still, Troyanovski got a nice consolation of $326,454 for the second place. Impressively, that was the 12^th six-figure sum that the 43-year-old pro claimed. This brought his tournament winnings to more than $5.1 million overall.

Excitement For Shirsikov

Shirshikov was very happy with the outcome and couldn’t hide his emotions in the post-tournament interview. He expressed his delight at becoming the first Russian to win a Stars tournament on home soil. His mother is probably even happier, as Shirshikov shared that she was expecting a new Mercedes from her son.