It’s already tough enough to defeat a player of the calibre of Eelis Paerssinen in a Pot-Limit Omaha tournament, but when you flop top full house against him for all the chips, and it’s no good?
Well, GG to you, I guess.
That was the case for runner-up Levon Khachatryan, as midway through his heads-up match with Paerssinen, he thought he had the $25K PLO High Roller bracelet around his wrist as all the chips went in with him holding the second nuts, a flopped top full house. Instead, Paerssinen rolled over the mortal nuts, flopped quads.
From that crushing point, there was no coming back for Khachatryan as the uber-talented Finnish PLO wizard carried that momentum to a second WSOP bracelet.
PokerOrg asked him straight up how it’s even fair for someone of his skill level to be on the right side of a cooler like that as well.
“It’s unfair… I don’t know, it just feels unreal to play that kind of hand and win like 25 million in a hand that’s never supposed to happen.”
Nuts vs second nuts
The hand in question went down as Khatchatryan held a roughly 47M to 20M lead over Paerssinen.
Khachatryan raised to 1.8M preflop and was called by Paerssinen to see the flop of 
. Khachatryan continued for 1.2M, and Paerssinen check-called.
The duo checked the 
turn, but then on the river 
, Paerssinen bet 3.6M. Khachatryan made it 12M, and Paerssinen jammed for just under 18M total.
The Californian thought the win was his, calling with 
for the flopped full house, but the Finn rolled over 
for flopped quad nines to take the unlikeliest of pots.
The disappointed runner-up was kind enough to speak to PokerOrg after the match to discuss the crushing hand.
“I thought I had him when he went all in, Khachatryan told us. “I thought he had king-nine or pocket jacks. I would never put him on nines. I thought it was over there, but I got disappointed when he showed quads. From that moment, I just got card dead. He’s a good player. It’s okay.”
The second-place finish was obviously bittersweet for Khatchatryan, but he was still pleased to take home a career-high $1,440,680, dwarfing his previous best score of $32,401, according to The Hendon Mob.
“I’m happy with the result. I just got unlucky with that hand. I think I would have won otherwise, but whatever, he got lucky on me.”
Paerssinen couldn’t deny that without that hand, he may not have been able to overcome his opponent’s lead at that point to claim the bracelet and $2,161,056 first prize.
“I’m not a big believer in momentum and these kinds of things, but I definitely think that changed the momentum there quite a lot. He was winning almost every single pot before that, and losing that kind of cooler, of course, it’s tough mentally to gather yourself after that. It definitely was a changing point for the match.”
$25,000 Pot-Limit Omaha High Roller final table results:
- Eelis Paerssinen (Finland) - $2,161,056
- Levon Khachatryan (USA) - $1,440,680
- Sergio Martinez Gonzalez (Spain) - $990,849
- Aaron Mermelstein (USA) - $694,268
- Jeremy Druckman (USA) - $495,769
- Matthew Costanzo (USA) - $360,930
- Alex Foxen (USA) - $267,993
- Richard Gryko (USA) - $203,027
