Much more than just a poker blog...
When the MicroMillions series was running on PokerStars, we took a look at the insane statistics that Russian players had gathered throughout the series. Seven of the ten players on the series leaderboard were Russian, and they scored 16 titles out of 100 events and earned more than $1.1 million combined. This time, we are looking at the Russian players most likely to crush the WCOOP events.
Aleksandr Elenskii, a Russian poker reporter shared some of his thoughts and his picks with PokerStars blog.
Elenskii states that the reason they are so successful is because the best Russian players know each other from the social media networks. They are all blogging but they don't share their strategy on the forums, instead they discuss thought processes on Skype, and they also meet a lot at live tournaments. He also points out that there is a huge amount of players competing, which improves the odds for success.
He shared his list of Russian grinders that you have to be on the lookout for during the 2014 WCOOP.
Veeea - He is currently the highest rated Russian on PocketFives.com, with more than $2 million in winnings. Veeea is currently in 7th place in PocketFives global leaderboard.
MAMOHT_T - He is the second behind Veeea on the Russian PocketFives leaderboard, and he is sitting on the 13th place in the global online leaderboard. MAMOHT_T has nearly $3 million in winnings on PokerStars.
Mikhail "Mikleler" Semin - Semin has $1.1 million in lifetime cashes, most of it coming from PokerStars. He is also successful in live tournaments with $175,000 in winnings.
Anatoly "nl_profit" Filatov - Anatoly Filatov is successful in both online and live tournaments, he has $1.6 million in online winnings, and $900,000 in live earnings. His biggest live score came this March, when he finished 2nd in the €10,300 High Roller event at EPT Vienna for $366,000.
Anatoly Filatov
Aleksandr "NoPlanB" Mordinov - Mordinov is 5th on the Russian online leaderboard and has almost $2 million in online winnings. He is 39th on the global leaderboard rankings and his biggest score is a 3rd place in the $1 million guaranteed Autumn Million on PartyPoker for $100,000.
Ravic85 - He is 6th on the Russian online leaderboard and has over $1.2 million in online cashes, and has impressive results like a Big 162 win and a win in the 888Poker $125,000 Mega Deep.
The list has two Russian speaking players aswell, Roman "Romeopro" Romanovskiy is the highest rated Ukranian player with almost $3.3 million in online winnings as well as an EPT side event win, and Psyhoagromor, who is ranked 5th in the Ukraine and has more than $1 million in winnings.
These are just some of the names who could make a splash at the WCOOP, but with the huge amount of Russian entrants (during SCOOP about 63,000 Russians entered, by far the most from any country), a new grinder could always make a name for him/herself, like last year's Russian FPP satellite qualifier Marat "maratik" Sharafutdinov, who turned his 40FPPs into a $1 million dollar payday.