Maksim Sekretarev is the latest player to have his name inscribed on the Mike Sexton World Poker Tour Champions Cup. The 19-year-old Russian defeated a field of 251 total entries to take down the 2021 WPT Russia ₽245,000 ($3,229 USD) buy-in no-limit hold’em main event. He earned ₽11,996,600 ($160,694 USD) as the champion of the event. This was by far the largest live tournament cash of his career.
The final day began with just six players remaining from the field of 251 entries. Sekretarev bagged up the chip lead at the end of day 3 with 67 big blinds. Ravil Khamatgareev had the next largest stack with 58 big blinds to start, while the other four players all had 24 big blinds or fewer.
Andrey Volkov had by far the shortest stack three-handed, but he managed to make a run and make things interesting despite the best efforts of Khamatgareev and Sekretarev. He doubled several times, including once with 10 9 against Sekretarev’s pocket kings, running out a straight to beat Sekretarev’s flopped set.
Khamatgareev managed to grab the chip lead for a bit, but the short-stack doubles and big swings continued, and Volkov even moved into the lead at a point.
Such was the nature of play by that point that Khamatgareev was back in the lead only to bust in third less than 10 minutes later when a decisive flip went to Sekretarev, his ace-queen pairing up to beat Khamatgareev’s jacks.
That gave Sekretarev a pretty big lead heads up and it wasn’t long before a trap paid off as he limp-called KQ and won unimproved against Volkov, who shoved with 10 8.
| Place | Player | Home Country | Prize |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Maksim Sekretarev | Russia | ₽11,996,600 (~$160,000) |
| 2 | Andrey Volkov | Russia | ₽7,998,200 (~$107,000) |
| 3 | Ravil Khamatgareev | Russia | ₽5,840,450 (~$78,000) |
| 4 | Vladimir Bozinovic | Serbia | ₽4,325,650 (~$57,000) |
| 5 | Vanush Mnatsakanyan | Russia | ₽3,249,750 (~$43,000) |
| 6 | Sergey Bobrik | Russia | ₽2,477,300 (~$33,000) |
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