The 2011 PokerStars.net EPT Snowfest is now complete and it was Vladimir Geshkenbein who walked away with the lion’s share of the prizepool, picking up €390,000 for his five days worth of work, not a bad job if you can get it.
The PKR sponsored pro is better known for his cash game prowess as he was the first player on the 3D-poker site to cash out $1,000,000, one of the reasons for him being snapped up by the site. His extremely loose-aggressive playing style has won him an army of fans but also plenty of haters who have been on the wrong side of heavy drubbings when they have faced him at stakes of between $1/$2 and more recently $25/$50.
Geshkenbein is almost as famous in the poker community for his brash words, though he will just say direct and a little blunt, something that his opponents discovered throughout the tournament. After winning a huge pot on Day 3 against EPT Copenhagen winner Michael Tureniec he rather impolitely mocked him saying “There you go, back to Sweden. Get back to Sweden.” Tureniec replied with the perfect question, “Is this your first time playing live?”
Indeed it was not, Geshkenbein had already won over $400,000 from live poker tournaments including his first major title back in 2009 when he won the APPT Macau High Roller event, where he had to beat 10-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner Johnny Chan heads-up for victory. And after this performance I doubt it will be his last either.
Although he played well throughout, his stack size swinging violently, he did get lucky in a few spots. When play was five handed he committed his stack with KhTh on a Jh-2d-6h flop and found a caller in the shape of Romanian Cristian Dragomir holding 8s8d, the turn blanked but the 9h on the river made Geshkenbein’s flush and left Dragomir with less than two big blinds.
Four hour after that, with the four players playing to blinds of 50,000/100,000/10,000 he raised preflop to 210,000 and only Giacomo Maitso called. The flop came down 9s-8c-Qc and Maitso checked, Geshkenbein bet275,000 and his Italian opponent moved all in. Geshkenbein asked for a count but before he received it he called anyway, turning over Qd4d, heavily dominated by the QsTc of Maitso. Again the turn bricked off but the 4h on the river sent Maitso to the rail.
The final hand, which took place 10 hours after the first one, saw Geshkenbein raise preflop, Kevin Vandersmissen re-raise and then quickly call the all in bet from the Russian. Geshkenbein lead with Ah9d against the Belian’s KdTs and when the board ran out As-9h-8d-Ks-5s it was curtains for Vandersmissen and the win for Geshkenbein, a worthy and entertaining winner.
The European Poker Tour now heads to Berlin, German between April 5-10 and we shall bring you all the news and results as soon as we have them.
Final table payouts
1st place: Vladimir Geshkenbein – €390,000
2nd place: Kevin Vandersmissen – €260,000
3rd place: Koen De Visscher – €147,000
4th place: Giacomo Maisto – €100,000
5th place: Cristian Dragomir – €81,000
6th place: Philip Meulyzer – €65,000
7th place: Denis Murphy – €49,000
8th place: Morten Mortensen – €35,000
