Oleg Lichii's EPT Sanremo Main Event - Live Blog!

[StevenM]

Its Official! Oleg Lichii from the Republic of Moldova is the official winner of the POKERTRACKER European Poker Tour Sanremo Main Event Sweepstakes! Oleg wins the grand prize of a seat in the EPT Sanremo Main Event plus 2,000 Euros for his travel expenses. Who is coming to celebrate with Oleg in Italy?

Oleg was the first prize winner picked, but he did not confirm his eligibly as required by the sweepstakes rules within a 72 hour period after his name was announced. Since we did not hear from Oleg in time we picked an alternate winner at random in accordance with the sweepstakes rules. We waited 72 hours hours, but the Alternate did not reach us to confirm his eligibility. While we were waiting to hear back from the Alternate, Oleg finally contacted us and provided us with the verification we needed to prove his identity and eligibility in the sweepstakes. This means that in the event the Alternate did not contact within the 72 hour verification period that Oleg Lichii would once again become the person selected to win the seat. Talk about a close call... Oleg is now our official sweepstakes winner, he is going to Sanremo Italy to represent PokerTracker in the EPT Main Event!

CONGRATULATIONS OLEG!

OlegLichii-PT-300x250.jpg (23.71 KiB) Viewed 10038 times

[StevenM]

Presenting the winner of the PokerTracker EPT Sanremo Main Event Sweepstakes: Oleg Lichii from Moldova! Oleg plays day 1B of the European Poker Tour main event tomorrow - lets all root for him to take it down! Oleg just picked up part of his prize: 2000 Euros for travel and expenses from the Sanremo Casio cage. Thats a 1,000 Euro Plaque in his hand - the maximum the cage can convert to cash is 999.00 Euros due to Italian banking regulatory rules, so we had to go to dinner with the plaque until he could cash it in at the casino cage.

When Oleg arrived in Sanremo for the European Poker Tour, we asked him what players he was excited to meet. At the top of the list was Liv Boeree. His wish came true very quickly when we ran into Liv at dinner with our good friend Sorel Mizzi. Lets hope this goos luck continues when Oleg plays Day 1B of the main event tomorrow!

PS: Oleg has already cashed in the plaque

[StevenM]

Oleg started Day 1B today in seat 2 at table 23. Lots of people have come over to wish Oleg well including the PokerStars Blog staff, Head of Live Poker Operations for PokerStars Europe Neil Johnson, EPT president Edgar Stuchly, of Skrill and many others. Everyone is rooting for Oleg to run deep and cash, his cinderella story appeals to everyone we speak with. The cards are in the air, and Oleg looks very comfortable now - a big improvement from when he sat down, he was rightfully nervous at first but he appears to have a command of his table now. We don't recognize any of his table mates so far, we cannot tell yet but we hope it is a soft table that allows him to accumulate chips fast.

Special thanks to Ben "ProfessorBen" Yu and Timothy "HighlandFox" Finee, they have both been great help to Oleg, making sure he is comfortable and discussing hands. Thats very cool of them!

Here is Oleg as he was about to start playing in the main event -

Oleg was the first person seated at his table, he had to play short handed at first

[StevenM]

Allow us to share a few tweets from Ben "professorben" Yu -

Yesterday, I met Oleg Leackey from Muldova, 1 of the poorest European countries, where an avg monthly salary is €200 and dinner costs €3...

...He's never played bigger than the Sunday Storm, had a score over $89, yet tomorrow he'll be the 1st from his country to play an EPT...

...reminds me of how excited we were when we were greener, before we all became professional and stoic, spouting "on to the next one..."

...was an inspiring pick-me-up after busting the IPT Main, will be rooting for him to cash, might write more about this later.

Best part of the night was when he thought @achen88 was a super poker celebrity, but had never heard of @AuntyChardonnay or Tom Dwan.
https://twitter.com/professorben/status ... 6009848832

[StevenM]

Update at the first break -

Oleg's stack up is 33K, up 3K from his 30 starting stack. We didn't have a lot of time to talk with him during the break because he was busy being interviewed by Sara Grant and the PokerNews.com team - once his interview goes live, we will share it here!

[StevenM]

Oleg update at the send of the second break : Blinds are now 150/300/25, and he is just slightly below average because he is back to the starting stack of 30,000. He had to run off to his hotel room during the break so we didn't get to talk for long once again, but we talk about working with him to extend his Visa to prepare for a deep run with the good people at ept-travel.com, the official travel agency of the EPT Poker Tour. Dinner break coming up soon.

Ben Yu stopped by to say hi!

[StevenM]

Not much to report right now, except he got the chance to meet Dominic Niche and Mickey Peterson during the break. Dominic and Oleg have similar sized stacks, the only person we know of with a bigger stack going into the final 2 hours of Day 1B is Sorel Mizzi - who came by to wish Oleg well once again.

I'll report in at the end of the evening, lets hope Oleg remains one of the chip leaders going into day 2!

[StevenM]

The very end of Day 1B did not go well for our PokerTracker "Cinderella" hero Oleg Lichii. Just before the end of the day Oleg woke up with KK in the blinds when UTG open raised and Tobias Hagedorn made a three-bet in late position to 2,900, he had been very active this table in many pots. Oleg then four-bet to T5,100 which Hagedorn called - they were both fairly deep with around 80,000 effective stacks.

Oleg decided to check the flop of 8 Q 5 to induce a bet from his opponent, Hagedorn checked back. Oleg then led a 3s turn card with a .5 pot bet, and Hagedorn called. The river was the 9 which Oleg decided to check to try and induce a bet from Hagedorn, but he was surprised to find that Hagedorn bet 2x the size of the pot. Oleg studied the situation and decided that Hagedorn's range consisted of many made hands that could be turned into a bluff so he called to discover that Hagedorn had 5c9c for two pair on the river. Unfortunately this crippled Oleg and left him with just T19,000, and just under 24 big blinds to start on day two when he returned to play the level of 400/800.

http://www.pokernews.com/live-reporting ... .81419.htm

[StevenM]

Oleg doubled up at the start of Day 2. The table folded to Jan Bendik' in the Small Blind who openen raised, our hero Oleg Lichii shoved in the big blind with T T and Jan Bendik called with A 7 . The board ran out well for Oleg, 2 4 3 3 7 which allowed Oleg to scoop a big T43,600 pot!

http://www.pokernews.com/live-reporting ... .81499.htm

[StevenM]

We have bad news to report... right after the last hand where he doubled up Oleg ran into a brick wall. Oleg tells us he 3Bet preflop with A A , and then CBet on a Q 9 6 flop, his opponent Viatcheslav Ortynskiy called. The turn was the J and Oleg shoved... unfortunately that was the card that improved Viatcheslav Ortynskiy's hand to a set, ending this Cinderella story run at EPT Sanremo.

It has been an amazing run for Oleg, we are proud to have him represent PokerTracker today as our sweepstakes winner. We will always consider him a friend of PokerTracker!


http://www.pokernews.com/live-reporting ... .81502.htm