Canadian Wins WSOP Circuit Playground Main Event On His Birthday

Kliment Tarmakov won the World Series of Poker International Circuit Playground $2,500 CAD main event, claiming the $341,865 first-place prize in one of the biggest WSOPC events of the year. The Torontonian kept the title in Canada, outlasting a field of 1,483 entrants to secure his first WSOP Circuit ring.

Prior to this week, Tarmakov’s most recent live tournament cash came at the 2019 Caribbean Poker Party in the Bahamas. Now he’ll be headed back to the same island nation, as his winner’s prize includes a $5,000 package to WSOP Paradise in December.

This final table represented a significant windfall for each of the final nine players. Only David Quang, the runner-up, had over $1 million in total results coming into this tournament. Tarmakov’s previous best live tournament result came in the 2018 WPT Montreal championship, also held at Playground Poker Club, in which he finished 14th.

Tarmakov claimed victory in this event on his 38th birthday. In addition to the hardware and the money, he also earned 1,440 Card Player Player of the Year points, his first qualifying result on a leaderboard presented by CoinPoker.

Biding His Time

Quang was the chip leader to start the final day, but Ricardo Cermeno-Sandoval went on a tear in the early action. He eliminated Louise Francoeur on the official final table bubble, and pushed towards the top of the chip counts.

Eliminations were distributed fairly evenly, with David Orlando, Behnam Patros, and then Quang each picking off a player to get down to the final six. Quang’s position as chip leader swung hard in the wrong direction when Orlando spiked a three-outer, and Ceremeno-Sandoval stepped into that vacuum as the new top stack.

Cermeno-Sandoval further extended his lead when he eliminated Charanjeev Malhotra in sixth ($61,841). He did so in the unlikeliest of runouts, coming from way behind with A♠9♣ on a 10♥4♠3♠ flop to beat 10♠9♠ with a runner-runner spade flush.

Patros busted Orlando in fifth place ($83,709), and then, during four-handed play, Tarmakov made his run towards the title.

A Birthday Run To Victory

A rivered ace-high flush on a four-heart board seemingly jump-started Tarmakov’s stack. But Patros started to accumulate chips at a frantic pace during what would become a long and turbulent stretch of four-handed play.

While Tarmakov slipped to the shortest stack, Patros, Quang, and Cermeno-Sandoval each exchanged the lead multiple times. The deadlock broke after several hours, when Quang claimed a massive chip lead at the expense of Ceremeno-Sandoval’s (4th – $115,091) entire stack. The last of the chips went in on the river of a K♥9♥2♣4♣2♦ board, and Quang’s A♦K♦ pipped Cermeno-Sandoval’s K♣Q♥.

Tarmakov claimed a chunk of Patros’ stack, and then Quang took the rest, with Quang’s pocket sixes making a full house to trounce Patros’ A♦J♦. He secured $160,673 as the third-place finisher.

Facing a deficit of more than 3:1 to start heads-up play, Tarmakov dominated the early proceedings to erase the gap. Quang responded, going back up 2:1, but Tarmakov took control during the first all-in showdown of the heads-up match. Tarmakov’s pocket sevens held against pocket fours, and that put Quang on the brink.

Pocket fours were good enough for Tarmakov, though. He called Quang’s final all-in bet and held off the J♦10♠ to secure the title. Quang earned $227,697 as the runner-up.

Final Table Results

Photo credit: WSOP / Poker.Org