Kovalenko Takes Chip Lead into the Penultimate Day
After the bubble burst, two more hands were played before the players bagged up for Day 4 tomorrow in the Merit Poker Classic $5,300 Main Event which was also the end of Level 15. The tournament only played five levels as they needed to finish before 8 PM local time. Pavel Kovalenko takes the overnight chip lead with 3,162,000 in his bag.
A lot of Kovalenko’s chips were won when he made the right call against Vlad Darie. Kovalenko had five-bet preflop and was called by Darie. After they both checked through the ten-queen-queen flop, Kovalenko check-called the bet of Darie on the seven on the turn. The river completed the board with a trey and a flush draw. Kovalenko checked again and now Darie put him all-in. Kovalenko tank-called with the pocket kings and saw Darie had ace-high in his hand to take him into the chip lead which he didn’t let go for the rest of the day.
Also bagging big with more than twice the average chip count are Pavel Plesuv with 3,055,000, the Day 1e chip leader Kacper Pyzara (3,000,000), Joey Weissman (2,494,000), Boris Kolev (2,318,000), Jacek Ladny (2,125,000), Andreas Christoforou with 2,000,000. Other notable players making it through to Day 4 include Kenny Hallaert, Manig Loeser, Day 2 chip leader Sergey Baburin, Dragos Trofimov, Andrey Pateychuk, Stoyan Obreshkov, Vladimir Troyanovskiy, and Darie too.
The partypoker representatives still have two irons in the fire with Ludovic Geilich and Kristen Bicknell. Geilich tagged 2,147,000 chips at the end of the day but Bicknell only has eleven big blinds to start Day 4 with. Joni Jouhkimainen fell to Elvin Sarkarov when he ran his ace-king into the sevens of Sarkarov. Anatoly Filatov was eliminated by Loeser when he shoved his ace-six from the big blind and was called with ace-seven.
Hand-for-hand play started with around 30 minutes left in Level 15 and 73 players remaining. Vicent Bosca was eliminated before the real bubble would start. Bosca called a raise of Ashkan Fattahi but Weissman three-bet in the small blind. Fattahi got out of the way but Bosco shoved which Weissman snap-called with ace-king. Bosca held pocket jacks and flopped a set but Weissman picked up a straight draw and hit it on the turn to eliminate him.
![Selahaddin Bedir (right) eliminates [Removed:61] (left) on the bubble](https://pnimg.net/w/lr-attachments/1/5cd/5b9742b939.jpg)
During the bubble, four different players managed to double up but it finally burst when [Removed:61] shoved his last 27,000 from the cutoff and was called by the players in the blinds. In the end, it was Selahaddin Bedit who burst the bubble as he held four-trey on the trey-king-jack-trey-four board to make a full house while Youness had queen-jack.
Jeff Hakim, Mikhail Galitskiy, Saar Wilf, Day 1d chip leader Shaul Meir, and Igor Ovcharenko all min-cashed during the final two hands of the night while the rest all bagged up to play Level 16 tomorrow, Saturday, May 11, at noon local time with another six levels of 75 minutes each scheduled.
The full chip counts and seat draw for Day 4 will be posted as soon as the PokerNews live reporting team receives them from the organization. Make sure to return at noon to follow all the action from the Merit Crystal Cove Hotel and Casino as the tournament’s penultimate day will be played here in sunny Cyprus.