The title of the World Heads-Up Championship was played for by Artur Martirosian and Alexey Boyko.
For the last 5 years, this tournament has been held with a buy-in of $25k (previously it was $10k) and a cap of 64 participants. There are usually more people who want to participate, so latecomers are added to the waitlist. Artur Martirosian was also on the waiting list. He arrived in Las Vegas right after Triton in Montenegro (he took 3rd place in the Omaha Main Event and 7th place in the last tournament of the series), but due to a flight delay, he was almost a day late and couldn't time to register on time. Artur was given 9th place in the queue, but half an hour before the start, he was already first. Several players always cancel their registration at the last moment, because they were deep in other tournaments. This is what happened this time.
In the first round, Artur beat the most high-priced player in the Negreanu draft, Jeremy Ausmus, and at one point the American live reg was leading with 90% of all chips in the game.
In the second round, mararthur1 dealt with Faraz Jaka, who was unable to put up a decent fight: “He lasted 40 minutes. I got all the value, all the bluffs worked, tomorrow is the third round for ITM.”
On the first day, Alexey Boyko was matched against Englishman Matt Belcher and fantasy participant Stephen Song (he had already received 101 points for 21st place in the Mystery Millions tournament with 19,654 entries).
In the match against Belcher, Alexey made an unsuccessful bluff for his stack, but this did not prevent him from winning. Shortly after the start of the match, Alexey made a preflop raise, called a check-raise on the flop and bet on the turn . The river was a and the opponent checked, so Alexey pushed with , but got a call from .
After this hand, Boyko was left with 75,000 chips against 225,000, but he managed to regain the lead and held on in the final hand with AJo against A2o.
On the second day, the players again played only two matches. The start of the game was delayed because the organizers did not charge the tablets with shot clocks, and there were no extra cables at hand.
The first to win their matches and reach ITM stage were Chance Kornuth and Artur Martirosian. Artur beat Kevin Rabichow, whom he called his strongest opponent at this stage.
“We did very well, finished quite quickly, I just won almost all the pots,” he reported in a telegram.
Alexey Boyko beat Brandon Brown fairly quickly. Patrick Leonard, Thomas Eishen, and little-known Harvey Castro, David Chen, and Mike Shi also won their matches.
At one point, Chen was left with a stack of 5 blinds against his opponent's 55.
Round 4 bracket:
Patrick Leonard won his fourth-round match the fastest and Alexey Boyko followed him into the final day of play. He quickly pulled ahead and was comfortably in the lead until he lost a big pot. On the board , Alexey bet all the streets with an all-in on the river. His opponent asked to count the stack, spent his time bank and only after that made the call. Alexey no longer doubted that his they are good, but Castro showed .
After a few hands, Alexey got again and made a 4-bet shove, which his opponent immediately called with and didn't improve. In the final hand of the match, Castro moved all-in on the board , Boyko checked the stack, threw one chip into the center and opened . To beat , that was enough.
Chance Kornuth quickly took the lead in his match against Artur. At the 8,000/16,000 level, our player was down to just 250,000 chips against 2,150,000.
In one of the board hands Artur double-barreled in position on the flop and turn, but checked on the river.
“It’s a good check,” Kornuth said and opened it. , hinting that he didn't plan to throw away the river.
“I’m not sure,” Artur doubted and bowed his head.
After that, Martirosian restored his stack and gradually brought the match to victory. Following the confrontation with Kornut, he noted his patience.
In the final quarterfinal, David Chen defeated Thomas Eischen.
The final day also started with a delay; this time the organizers forgot to allocate dealers for the tournament.
Alexey won his semi-final against Chen in just 30 minutes. In the deciding hand, Alexey called a 4-bet preflop, check-called the turn, the turn was checked, and on the river the board Boyko spent the time bank and shoved. Chen called for the rest of his stack (75BB) with and was powerless against .
Artur and Patrick played a little longer. In one key hand, Pads put 60% of his stack into the pot with A-high, but gave up on the river.
Artur called the 3-bet, re-raised the continuation bet, and bet the turn and river.
In the final hand, Artur shoved with AQo, Leonard called with AJs and didn't improve.
Was fun! GG to him, don’t think I had much chance with the distribution, but if there’s anybody to take advantage of a good distribution it’s a beast like him. GL in the final amigo, future HOFer. https://t.co/JGj6x9YjRQ pic.twitter.com/JSRaXtd9vw
— Patrick Leonard 🫡 (@padspoker) June 1, 2025
At the very beginning of the Russian-speaker's final, Alexey won several big pots and took the lead with 6.3 million to 3.3 million.
In this hand, Alexey check-called on all streets.
The next levels passed without any major shocks, Artur sometimes approached Alexey, then again let him go ahead. Then the players played a big pot:
Artur 3-bet 400,000, the flop and turn went check-check, and on the river Artur bet exactly pot 800,000. He got called.
In the decisive hand, Artur 3-bet all-in, Alexey with a stack of 29 blinds made the call.
Alexey had two pair on the flop, but Artur got a runner-runner flush.
“Alexey played well,” the champion said in an interview immediately after his victory, “but I was a little better and I have a little more experience in heads-up.”
This is Martirosian's third bracelet, but his first in Vegas. He won his first two in a $10k heads-up online tournament and an $800 Flip&Go in the Bahamas.
The $1,000 Mystery Millions has 20 players left out of 19,654. The lineup is pretty solid for such a mega-field – the game includes well-known grinders Daniel Strelitz and Michael Acevedo, Hustler regular Wesley Fey, Christopher “SuckMe69” Zolo (who we talked about in the last review), and Artem Ryabov, who has a Russian flag in the WSOP+ app and an American one on the Hendon Mob .
The winner will receive $1,000,000.
Two more millionaires were determined, thanks to the bounty. The first envelope at the start of the day was drawn by Tyler Montoya.
Barely an hour into Day 2 of the Mystery Millions and Tyler Montoya has pulled the FIRST of two $1,000,000 bounties! #WSOP2025 pic.twitter.com/9Ke0QkVSdb
— WSOP – World Series of Poker (@WSOP) June 1, 2025
– Will your plans for the summer change in any way after winning a million? – journalists asked Tyler.
– I was already planning to play a bunch of tournaments on my own, nothing will change here. But if you work as a stripper, I wouldn't recommend skipping today's shift.
The second envelope was pulled out by Thomas Zanot, who has already been called the luckiest gambler of our time.
In January 2023, Thomas won a $6,443,401 progressive jackpot playing Pai Gow poker at the Flamingo Casino.
Antonio Galiana won a bracelet in Event #3 for $5,000 NLH ($582,008).
This is the Spaniard's second bracelet, the first he won at last year's World Series of Poker in the $2,500 NLH event.
After that victory, the champion's dark past was revealed and he was accused of fraud, but the parties quickly settled.
Event #5 – $5,000 PLO – won by Caleb Firth ($620,696).
Firth was all in at 150,000/300,000, while with the blinds at 40,000/80,000, Caleb had just 100,000 left. Even his heads-up opponent noted the American player's incredible comeback.
3rd place went to Martin Kabrhel ($288,775), who, in his unique style, did everything to irritate his opponents – he talked nonsense loudly and loudly and constantly wasted time. They started timing him in almost every hand – at first the managers gave him 30 seconds to decide, but then it got to 10.
Getting close to the final table of the $5k PLO tourney, Martin Kabrhel shows that poker isn’t always just about math🤯😂 @WSOP @martinkabrhell pic.twitter.com/LTBGgELiVJ
— Poker Org (@pokerorg) May 31, 2025
During the tournament, one player landed what has already been dubbed the "worst seat in history" on social media. The poor guy's seatmates were Kabrhel and Maurice Hawkins.
"LMAO. Imagine if you got a table like that on your first day at the WSOP," Will Jaffe says with amusement.
"I'm going to exercise my one-time deregistration right now," Scott Seiver warned.
"And I'll push any two cards," one of the commentators shared his strategy. "Either I'll leave this hell, or I'll lead it."
62-year-old Dan Heimiller (he turns 63 on June 25 and will likely celebrate his birthday at the table) won Event #6, the $1,500 Stud.
This is the seasoned veteran's third bracelet. In his Twitter caption, Dan briefly described his poker journey:
– Here you can follow my bankroll – I went from zero to $613,054, then zeroed out again, then went up to $2,234,879, dropped back to -$87,057 and went up to ?????
The win earned Dan $106,840. He beat established limit specialist (and hat-wearer) David Bach heads-up. Both were undrafted by Negreanu.
After the victory, Dan threw a party to which Allen Kessler was invited.
“It seems the guy likes corn,” the commentators made a bold assumption.
One of the strongest limit game specialists, Benny Glaser, won the Dealers Choice tournament with a buy-in of $1,500.
This is the 36-year-old Briton's sixth bracelet.
What impressed Benny most was the resilience of his heads-up opponent, Matthew Schreiber.
– He was all-in 10 or 11 times, I even lost count. In 3-max he had 45,000 left when the big blind was 120,000, after that he won 6 or 7 all-ins in a row. In heads-up he dropped to 125,000, but again he held on through five all-ins in a row. I was even starting to worry, so after the win I felt relief and joy.
The list of winners of this tournament includes Russians Andrey Zaichenko and Andrey Zhigalov. Zaichenko came to Las Vegas for the first time since 2019.
In the winter, Phil Hellmuth announced that he would not play in the main event.
But now he has changed his mind. Phil announced that the decision on this issue will be made by his Twitter readers and opened a vote.
When the "boycott the main event" option won by a small margin, the tweet disappeared from the feed. A little later, Phil posted a screenshot in which the "play" option was already confidently leading and wrote that he would 100% participate in the main event.
Phil explained that the vote was rigged and at one point 3,000 votes were thrown in for a boycott.
Traditionally, there are a lot of questions for the dealers at the start of the series. One of them asked the players if he should shuffle after each hand.
There are a lot of interesting things happening in other casinos as well.
Kevin Garoshen shared his favorite for "the best giveaway of the summer":
– My favorite hand of the summer so far at the nugget was a guy 4b jamming the flop on T94cc with 88 then saying fuckkkk i thought i had Ace Jack.”
Max Lykov is experiencing a second poker youth and is tearing up American casino events.
He recently beat 1,579 players to win $230,842 in the $1,100 Wynn Summer Classic . And on May 9, Decay won a $600 tournament in Los Angeles that had 1,368 entries. That win earned him $99,399.
There, at Wynn, Nikolai Tulin won a turbo tournament for $1k (prize $49,457).
