Low Stakes Grinder Wins $1 Million On PokerStars

Low stakes online grinder “maratik” from Russia has taken his poker career to a whole new level after taking down the 2012 World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) $5,200 no-limit hold’em main event for a massive $1,000,907 after 25 hours of play.
Normally the high buy-in tournament would have been far above maratik’s bankroll capabilities, but the canny Russian decided to take a punt using only his PokerStars’ frequent player points to satellite into the event. Two days later and now “maratik” is sitting atop of the world after having first beaten a 1,825 player field consisting of some of the toughest players in online poker.
Amongst the notable names cashing in was Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier in 221st ($12,318), Mickey “mement_mori” Petersen in 190th ($12,755), Jude “j.thaddeus” Ainsworth in 133rd ($15,056), Michael “Timex” McDonald in 51st ($23,725) and Kyle “KJulius10” Julius in 15th ($48,362).
Then after 22 hours of poker action spanning two days, the final table of nine was set with the blinds now at 40k/80k and the finalists lining-up as follows:
Mike “munchenHB” Telker: 11,907,089
Kakalala: 7,633,941
Jossel2008: 6,002,830
Phil “takechip” D’Auteuil: 3,783,516
maratik (Russia): 1,935,189
Ryan “TheCart3r” Carter: 1,894,230
FOO-92: 1,402,455
mitdadu: 999,448
sly caveat: 941,302
However, when six-players remained an ICM based deal was struck ranging from half a million dollars up to nearly $1 million (maratik: $900,907) leaving an extra $100k for the first place finisher.
Maratik (J-J) then went on to eliminate FOO-92 (5-5) in 6th ($502,992), before a battle of the blinds saw his A-10 take out a short-stacked munchenHB (10d-9d) shove, who subsequently exited in 4th for $1,000.584.
Eventually, maratik reached the heads-up phase against Canada’s Ryan “TheCart3r” Carter, who at this stage held a 4.5 to 1 advantage over his Russian opponent. However, maratik (Qd-Jd) evened the score against Carter (K-K) on a 10d-Kh-8d-2d-Qh board, and not long after the final hand was played when Carter (J-4) pushed all-in on a 3-Q-J-3 board only to see maratik was holding pocket aces. The 4 on the river changed nothing and so Ryan Carter collected $662,516 for his runner-up finish, while low-stakes grinder “maratik” was awarded the WCOOP bracelet and collected $1,000,907 in prize money.