Global Poker Masters, Finals: Italy screwed Russia

In defiance of all the predictions Team Italy has won the first Global Poker Masters cup, becoming the strongest poker team in the world. And in the Finals they were competing with Russia, not with the USA or Canada.

We wrote earlier about how the Day 1 of the team championship went on. Americans advanced straight to the semi-finals with confidence, British went off the distance and Ukrainian worked poker miracles.

The second day included few stages:

• first – heads up matches, team vs. team (one country goes busted);
• second – 6-max Sit-and-Go (two best teams go through to the finals);
• third – finals, five simultaneously played heads ups (the game continues up to three winnings).

So, in the first round, quarter finals, Germany played against Canada, Ukraine against Italy and Russia against France. The last one lost tremendously and was eliminated from the contest.

Quarter finals results:

Germany – Canada (2:1)
Ole Schemion > Andrew Chen
George Danzer > Jonathan Duhamel

Ukraine – Italy (2:1)
Oleksandr Gnatenko > Andrea Dato
Eugene Katchalov > Dario Sammartino

Russia – France (3:0)
Ivan Soshnikov > Bertrand Grospellier
Vladimir Troyanovskiy > Sylvain Loosli
Anatoly Filatov > Paul Tedeschi.

Team Russia

Team Canada, one of the favorites at the beginning of the championship, barely crept over to the next stage – semifinals.

6-max table:

1. USA – 118,000
2. RUS – 111,000
3. GER – 101,000
4. UKR – 84,000
5. ITA – 79,000
6. CAN – 60,000.

Despite the modest stack Canadians had in comparison to other teams they had 300 BB, so any team could expect a victory. According to the rules, one representative from each team entered the contest and he could be replaced at any moment.

At the beginning Americans were excited beyond measure. Dan Smith gathered a set of kings on the river, annihilating Ukrainian Oleksandr Gnatenko’s flopped set of sevens. Thus Ukraine was the first to leave semifinals.

Later Smith beats Canada and Italians beat Germans. And here’s the most interesting – bubble. Americans, Russians, Italians – who will make it to the heads up?

As it turned out, the absolute Global Poker Masters favorites will leave empty-handed. At the last deal Dario Sammartino 4-bet Smith with Aces, the latter wanted to ask his team for advice, but no one was around (self-centered nature of poker is obvious). Well, Smith tried and called… with sevens.

The USA is out; Russia and Italy are in the finals.

Vladimir Troyanovskiy

Finals chip counts:

1. Italy – 404,900
2. Russia – 148,100.

Final heads ups:

Table 1: Vladimir Troyanovskiy vs. Mustapha Kanit
Table 2: Vitaly Lunkin vs. Giuliano Bendinelli
Table 3: Anatoly Filatov vs. Rocco Palumbo
Table 4: Alex Bilokur vs. Dario Sammartino
Table 5: Ivan Soshnikov vs. Andrea Dato.

They played till three winnings. Russians were doing not bad – despite the serious chips disadvantage. Though, in two hours everything was over. Filatov lost simple showdowns (А-К < 6-6), Bilokur also opened unsuccessfully (A-3 > K-8), and Troyanovskiy Mustapha called on board K-6-10 with the second pair. Italian showed top-pair…

“I «underbluffed» an Italian, sorry”, – Anatoly Filatov will write on Twitter.

So, the winning team: Dario Sammartino, Mustapha Kanit, Rocco Palumbo, Andrea Dato, Giuliano Bendinelli.