PCA 2015 – Ilkin Garibli Outlasts Highrollers to Win $1,105,040

The record breaking field of 269 players in the PCA High Roller event has been reduced to just one. His name is Ilkin Garibli and he is the latest poker-made millionaire after claiming the first prize of $1,105,040. Garibli successfully navigated the formidable field in this $25k buy-in tournament to claim the High Roller title after three days of play.

11 players have returned to conclude what they’ve started on Monday and Garibli was not the one you’d bet on when looking at the list of participants. Jean-Pascal Savard has a lot of chips to throw around, Oleksii Khoroshenin had both chips and experience; then there were Dominik Nitsche, Scott Seiverand few others whose names ring the bell.

Sometimes, however, it is just meant to be. Garibli, 26-year old from Azerbaijan, is a cash game player who just happened to be in the Bahamas when the PCA festival kicked off and, persuaded by his friends, he took a seat in the High Roller event. The friendship will probably grow stronger now as few days later, Garibli is a cool million richer.

Having outlasted Bryn Kenney and Dominik Nitsche, Ilkin started the final table of nine with a decent stack, and then saw Lee Markholt and Dan Heimiller sent to the rail as well. Faraz Jaka, who started the day as the short stack was able to spin his stack up a bit, but he would go no further than seventh.

For Nick Petrangelo the day ended when he committed his short stack with King-Jack only to run into pocket Aces of Kuether and a merciless dealer who offered no help. After his exit, Garibli took the initiative once again, but failing to send players out.

That changed when Scott Seiver flopped a set of Sevens and moved in against the Azerbaijani player who was holding pocket Tens. Garibli made the call, only to see the bad news and it looked as if Seiver would claim an easy double-up. It was not to be, however, as turn and river came in diamonds, giving Ilkin a better flush and sending Seiver to the cage to claim his $398,340 fifth place prize.

This propelled the Azerbaijani to a huge chip lead, with more than twice what everybody else at the table had combined. Then Oleksii Khoroshenin proceeded to eliminate the chipleader to start the day, Canadian Jean-Pascal Savard in fourth, good for $508,080, and it looked as if the two would go heads up.

However, Joe Kuether, who was now the short stack, knew he had nothing to lose and went into super-agro mode. The Lady Luck decided to smile upon him, as he doubled up with the worst of it and then proceeded to send the Ukrainian to the rail when his Ace-Seven cracked Oleksii’s Ace-Queen. Nothing Khoroshenin could have done really, and he had to be content with the third place money of $629,460.

Despite the fact that the Garibli went into the heads-up with better than two-to-one advantage, they’ve decided to chop the remaining money almost equally, with $1,105,540 going to the Azerbaijani and $1,050,000 for the American. After the chop, they proceeded to play just for the trophy and the SLYDE watch.

Although the stakes were, perhaps, small in comparison to what they’ve just locked up, both players continued to take it very seriously and it took a while for Ilkin to finally break Joe’s resistance and claim the PCA High Roller title.

There you have it, an accidental millionaire.

Photo: Joe Giron, PokerStars Blog