Seven players returned to play the final day of the $25K NLH High Roller 6-Handed at the WSOP, but it didn’t take long to get down to six.
Pavel Plesuv flopped a set of queens, while Klemens Roiter turned an ace to go with his . The river was the
and, facing an all-in, Roiter tanked. GTO Wizard showed how marginal a spot it was – it recommended folding, but only 52% of the time. The other 48% was a call.
Roiter made the correct fold and survived – for one more hand, when action folded to him in the small blind. He moved all-in with and Artur Martirosian made the call with
.
The flop hit both players, but Roiter had the best of it – right up until the
river. Poker can be a cruel game.
Just ask four-time bracelet winner Chance Kornuth.
He got the last of his chips in with shortly after and looked good for a double. Yosuke Miki had other ideas. His
connected with a queen on the flop and another on the turn, to send Kornuth to the rail.
Luckily, this is the WSOP, and Kornuth decided to Martingale and hopped straight into the $50K High Roller.
Speed run to two
Start-of-day chip leaders Sean Winter and Martirosian were still the big dogs, but Martirosian had taken the lead. Plesuv, Miki and Marius Gierse made up the final five.
The rich got richer. Martirosian took out Gierse with a flopped flush, and then Miki (AJ > AT) to leave just three left after a little over two hours.
Plesuv took out Winter in a classic cooler. He flopped a set of nines while Winter hit top pair with his AK. The river gave him a chance to chop, but Plesuv filled up instead.
Heads-up began with almost even, deep stacks – 76 bigs for Plesuv against 74 for Martirosian.
Plesuv was looking for his second bracelet after his win in the Millionaire Maker in 2023. It would be a fourth for Martirosian.
Martirosian takes control
After a relative speed run to this point, these two players bedded in. After an hour the stacks were still level but then Martirosian found jacks while Plesuv had fives, and ended the hand with a 3:1 chip lead.
That became an 8:1 lead when Martirosian had the first shot at the bracelet. His failed to get the job done when Plesuv nailed a straight on the river with
.
He got another chance almost an hour later with vs.
.
This time the runout went his way – – to give him his fourth WSOP bracelet and the $1,286,285 first prize.
"The WSOP bracelet is special," Martirosian said afterward.
"It was very deep heads-up and we played something like three hours. I was ready to play three more hours."
Watch the final table play out in full below.
Images courtesy of WSOP.