$$ Cash 4 Seat $$

We’ve become accustomed to seeing Team PokerStars Pro Alex Kravchenko cashing in the main events of the European Poker Tour, but now the Russian has added a big cash in a mixed event to his name.

He got first in the €1,000 Mixed side event at Casino San Remo, netting a very tasty €70,000 to his bank account. Congratulations, Alex.

A full list of results from the EPT San Remo side events can be found right here.

Alex Kravchenko

If you rubbed a lamp and a genie granted you the wish of seeing all the cards of one poker player throughout an entire tournament, who would you choose? Few would argue against a nod for ElkY, or for Dario Minieri; they play pretty much any two cards in any position, and the show would be a cross between a video nasty and a surrealist masterpiece. You’d learn a lot.

But in a sense it would also be a waste of a unique opportunity. Those two play so many pots all the way to the river that we often end up seeing their cards anyway. (”Oh, I never put him on five-seven,” is the kind of thing that usually rings out on such occasions.)

I’ve always been fascinated by someone like Barry Greenstein. He has such a startling tournament record, and such respect among his peers, that he is clearly massively capable - and yet I simply don’t know how he does it. If he’s called, he usually has the goods and he is very rarely caught out on a stone-cold bluff. But he cannot be waiting for aces all day long, so what is he doing? I think I’d tell that genie to give me Greenstein; I’d really like to learn the secret.

We don’t see much of Greenstein on the EPT, but we do have Alex Kravchenko, who could well be the Russian equivalent. By the time Kravchenko made the final table of the 2007 World Series Main Event he was already a bracelet winner from earlier in the series, and those two results were among seven WSOP cashes that year. He clearly does something very right indeed, but similarly we never ever seem to see his cards.

Alex Kravchenko

Much like Greenstein, Kravchenko is anything but a visibly active player. His silent ice-cold stare through aviator shades is the eastern European version of Greenstein’s silent Californian slump. But the path from Kravchenko’s table to the cash cage is well worn: he has five EPT in-the-money finishes and another eight at the World Series since then. He must be getting involved but I never see it. The Kravchenko formula might also be worth a wish.

This afternoon in Prague, the draw has pitched Kravchenko on the same table as the aforementioned dervish Minieri.

Kravchenko, left, and Minieri

As is typical, Minieri is mixing it up. (I actually did a double take during an early orbit when Minieri folded four hands in a row pre-flop. He raised the fifth. Phew.) And as is typical, Kravchenko is unflustered. The clash of styles will be worth watching - and maybe another wish will be fulfilled.

I. Will. See. Alex. Kravchenko’s. Cards.

There are two frustrating things that can befall you in a poker tournament: firstly your aces can get cracked, and secondly there will be times when you bust on the bubble. Sometimes, both these things happen together; two misfortunes that make for one devastating conclusion.

Such was the case for Team PokerStars Pro Alex Kravchenko yesterday. He’d been comfortable enough in day two of the debut Russian Poker Tour event in St Petersburg, and was looking to make a deep run into the money, which started in 18th place (201 entries).

With 19 still in with a shout, and with 50,000 chips behind him, the home favourite moved all in confidently with A-A when chess player Alex Grishuk pushed with what turned out to be a rather feeble A-2.

The double up would make Kravchenko, a former WSOP Main Event final tablist, a force to be reckoned with. But wait! A two on the flop, and another falling devastatingly on the river was enough to send Kravchenko to the rail in 19th place - just one off the money.

Grishuk’s slice of luck did not last, though. Just a short while later he got all his chips in with 10-10 and was busted by Vadim Markushevsky’s A-K when the king fell on the river.

That gave Markushevsky the momentum to last the day and reach today’s final table of nine players, where Dumitru Gaina from Moldova will lead the pack chasing the 10,600,000 rubles first price (about $300,000):

1. Dumitru Gaina, Kishinev, Moldova - 501,000
2. Sergey Popuk, Arkhangelsk, Russia - 302,000
3. Sergey Solntsev, St. Petersburg, Russia - 256,000
4. Vadim Markushevsky, Minsk, Belarus - 256,000
5. Anatoly Ozhenilok, St. Petersburg, Russia - 203,000
6. Bulat Bikmetov, Novokuznetsk, Russia - 181,000
7. Evgeny Zaytsev, Lubertsy, Russia - 178,000
8. Alex Pantuhin, Kaliningrad, Russia - 76,000
9. Oleg Suntsov , St. Petersburg, Russia - 64,000

It had taken 90 minutes to burst the final table bubble, so spare a thought for Mark Vronsky, who pushed with pocket nines but ran into a mighty - and ultimately - conquering J-Q.

Team PokerStars Pro Vanessa Rousso started day two but was unable to make things happen with her short stack of little more than 10,000. She pushed with an ace, was called by Q-7, and a seven on the board was enough to eliminate her. She was gracious in defeat, though, and offered a “good luck” in Russian to everyone at the table. PokerStars sponsored player Ivan Demidov also fell early in the day in 39th place.

Today’s final kicks off at 3pm local time. If you can decipher Russian - and let’s face it, it’s easy enough… NOT! - you can follow the action with Pavel Sychev, our Russian blogger right here. If you can not understand a word of it, don’t worry - we’ll report on the progress on these esteemed pages later!

Omaha hi-lo split is a kind of poker game where you can see more action than in any other kind of poker and this final table was a good example of this statement - chips were changing hands fast, players stacks were going up and down. For example “PieOhMy” started with 816k , then was down to about 100k, than up to a chip lead of about 1.3 million and finally out in 3d place.

I was worried a little bit about the structure of the tournament - when I played mixed holdem event at the WSOP it looked to me that most of the action there was in a limit section of the tournament - but here there was a proper balance between limit and pot-limit game.

“BUCKIZ6″ started this final table with the decent cheap lead and kept this position for almost all final table until his victory with a prize of $55,800. He was playing very aggressive. His style, combined with a good portion of luck, was unbeatable this particular day.

On the final hand, both players has good starting hands and no surprise that there was a raise and reraise before the flop. “BUCKIZ6″ had Kc-Kd-2s-3c and “jamie2000″ has Ah-Js-5d-2c . Both of them hit the flop– Kh-8c-5h - so most of the money went into the pot on the flop, the low didn’t come and “BUCKIZ6″ won the tournament.

Alexander Kravchenko is a member of Team PokerStars.