The top 5 of the leaderboard won additional prizes, on top of their profits:
1. $17,000 Rolex Yacht-Master
2. $4,000
3. $2,500
4. $2,000
5. $1,500
Famous high rollers who took part in the challenge included:
- MunEZ: +$4,512.54 (3,671 hands with a win rate of 24.58 EV bb/100)
- PR0DIGY: +$6,818.83 (2,303 hands, 59.22 EV bb/100)
- avr0ra: +$2,252.35 (495 hands, 91.00 EV bb/100)
- dyrdom1: +$4,597.58 (10,995 hands, 8.36 EV bb/100).
Stefan Burakov took the last place, having played 85,988 hands with -9.27 EV bb/100 (-$39,852.69).
The top three winners of the Mid-Stakes CGWC were:
- WWSF45: +$36,886.46 (79,723 hands, 9.25 EV bb/100)
- InnerPeace: +$33,181.99 (43,113 hands, 15.39 EV bb/100)
- Yafish: +$27,356.97 (74,478 hands, 7.35 EV bb/100)
20 minutes before the end of the challenge, WWSF45 (having already secured victory), joined the stream on the CoinPoker channel and answered the hosts' questions.
– You're the new champ. How do you feel?
– It feels great man. I did enjoy the competition a lot, but the last week sucked so hard. It's kind of awkward spot to be in. I wanted to play, but I wanted badly to win this thing. Sitting it out looked like the right decision. I was thinking about playing a certain amount of hands every day, but I think it wouldn't change anything, because you can game around with that, basically. If I played a thousand hands, but I played tight, it means nothing, basically. I didn't come up with a solution to avoid that, but this situation sucked. I didn't enjoy it. I imagined I would receive some backlash, but thanks for the support. Other than that, I am quite happy,
– You played 80,000 hands.
– Yes, and in 20 days I think. It's the most hours I have played in such a short period of time, ever, and I have been playing 15 years.
– Is this your first Rolex?
– Yes, I don’t wear a watch usually.
– But now you will?
– I don't know. It will probably sit on a shelf.
– Which of your opponents surprised you? What bout PSDT. He didn’t play much, but he fought for every pot. And, what about InnerPeace?
– We didn't play much with InnerPeace, maybe one session. We are in opposite time zones.
With PTSD, I played a bunch with him. I believe we were running quite a similar strategy, if I am write about what he is doing. He is a tough one to play against, but I think I had some tricks, but it could be variance based of course. Everything in the challenge is quite variance based. You can have easy spots against one player, and then difficult decisions against another player.
For me, I think the toughest was kikelakesm. I was very surprised that he has been playing for only two years, I think he said it himself on one of his streams. His showdowns surprised me a lot. Also Raptogro, also from Spain. I feel like they have the same kind of plays. For me, they were the most difficult to play against.
– Are you a red line or blue line grinder?
– I can show you my challenge schedule.
– Looks like you haven't been bluffcatching much.
– Yes, I think I have done a good job with creating my image. I tried to show some bulls*** at showdowns and then took advantage of it a lot.
When you make some plays, but they are within the reasonable ranges, it doesn't stick in player's heads. But show some bulls*** and they will call you forever.
– There are some talks about the next Cash Game World Championship in NL10k, in November. Is there a chance to see you there?
– No chance. The gap between a player like me and an NL10k player is huge. It's incomparable. I talk to a couple of high stakes regs and I know how they think about hands. I know my thoughts perfectly.
I'm not the most technical player. I have years of experience and I have studied theory, but not very hard. The technical side is definitely not my biggest strength.
– I guess you play more from feel?
– Yes. I have a very bad memory, but I feel my opponents very well and understand how they see my game. Sometimes I feel the hatred of some opponents right through the monitor, and in poker you shouldn't make emotional decisions. I think I took advantage of such guys.
– It seems like your mental game is very good, because you played almost 80k hands and you were steady. At the beginning you were down around three stacks, then you just skyrocketed.
– 20 stacks. In the first week, I lost 20 buy-ins and was at the bottom on the leaderboard, second to last. I was minus 10k. I played poorly because I was used to a completely different field. Sometimes I tried too hard to win pots. But I think it was a profitable investment.
– Where did you have better results – in games with or without ante? (Ed. – participants played without ante in the 1st and 3rd weeks, and with ante in the 2nd and 4th)
– On tables with ante by a large margin. I'll show you the charts now.
This is where I lost 20 buy-ins.
– On the ante tables you were down 10 stacks at the end if I'm reading the chart correctly. Did that bother you?
– I had to change the game. The lineups in the first and second weeks with ante were very different from each other. In the first week, everyone played very nitty, I took a lot of dead money. There were tables where I did not fold from the button at all. I played with 50% VPIP for several days. But I specifically chose lineups where this would work. My preflop strategy heavily depended on the place at the table and the opponents.
I've had a fair amount of heads-up play with regs over the last few years, around 300,000 hands. That experience has been very useful in ante games because there are a lot of similar spots.
I also made big adjustments for playing multi-way pots. I spent about five hours in the solver, and that was enough to understand how to play them. Many players have no idea what to do at all. There were a lot of multi-way pots in this challenge, and the general idea of how the solver plays them was very useful to me.
– What was your win rate in multi-way pots, if that's not a secret?
– I don't even know. At such a distance it doesn't really matter, the dispersion is too big.
– How many tables did you play?
– In the starting week, I played 6 without an ante, gained 20 buy-ins, said “fuck it all, now only forward”. In the first week, I played 9 tables with an ante, in the second without an ante – 12 tables, and in the last week with an ante I returned to 9 tables. Games with an ante require more attention.
– At some point, TheDirector came close to you. He had $34k, and you had $36k.
– I had $35k, and I didn’t know his exact profit, but I watched a session where he took stack after stack. I immediately decided to play too, because there were still enough days, if things didn’t work out. I won 4 buy-ins on 12 tables in an hour and finished.
– Did the result put pressure on you?
– I started playing very loose on purpose. First I 3-bet a few times against TheDirector to make a statement – with T2o, K4o and similar hands. And then I tightened my range.
– What result did you actually finish with?
– I won exactly $50k. It was going great. I’ve played over 7 million hands online in my entire career, I know what an upstreak is. It wasn’t the biggest one in my life, but it wasn’t bad either.
We asked the champion a few more questions after the match.
– KARACHEVSKII wrote on the Russian GipsyTeam forum that the regulars' game in the championship was very different from usual. Did you get that impression? If so, how and why?
– Yes, definitely. The player pool is very diverse – regs from the main pool, regs from apps, many regs from NL200+ limits came to take shots, plus regs from NL1k+.
The format was very different from the usual. Regular tables without rake were not so different, and for those who are used to playing NL1k+ there was little difference, but for players with lower limits the ranges were very different from what they were used to. Well, the antes of the week are generally the Wild West. A lot of play in deeps. At the end of the hand you always see the hand of the winner – and this has a huge impact on the game, both strategically and psychologically.
Another point is that here (in my opinion), one could be confident in the cleanliness of the game, at mid-stakes on sites where there are poor security services (and this is almost all sites) the RTA problem is relevant.
The very vibe of the event encourages regs to try and go for every pot. Considering that these are mid-limits, people don't always do it well. I've been playing at midstakes for the last two years, before that I played 1k-2k – the difference between these limits in the level of play is quite large, and in general the level of the championship is quite consistent with the midstakes level, taking into account the factors that I listed. I have a lot of hands during the championship where there is an obvious technical defect, unsuccessful exploits, or incorrect interpretation of the opponent's game.
But it's normal to make mistakes, and all the players tried to show the best they could, I haven't had such great pleasure from the game for a long time, I really like playing anyway, but here I really enjoyed it every day.
– What faces did you see most often near the field? Karachevskii had this quote:
"The field played just terribly. In the top with a 10bb win rate there were nits-value bettors who could not make a single bluff three-bet for two days" , do you agree?
– I don't fully agree. There are a couple of players in the top who have achieved good results with that strategy, I have watched some of them a lot, and it was understandable that I was angry that they were not adjusted to and were given money. You could say that one way to approach these show tables is not to use the information to the fullest and not to adjust to players who fall out of the general meta.
– What surprised you most during the championship?
– How much more fun it is to play at show tables. I hope CoinPoker will add them to the lobby on a permanent basis – this is already being discussed. I liked everything – only positive feedback from the regs, there were many more amateurs at these tables than usual. Many amateurs played a lot of volume, and by the way, some of them played at a pretty good level, and I think many regs didn't even buy them out.
– Did you play with Stefan a lot? Why is his run so bad?
– We played, but not very much, it’s hard for me to play against him, I have to sweat in every hand, I’m starting to level up a lot, since I studied with him, I was in his school for about 3 months. In my opinion, it’s not about competence – he understands poker at a very high level. The way he reasons and can immediately break down any spot is impressive. He’s an open guy, and he will share his impressions himself.
– Will you change anything in preparation for the next championship?
– I didn’t prepare for this championship that much, the main part of the preparation was to clear a month to be able to play 200+ hours. I have two small children + a hobby that eats up time no less than poker, so the main challenge was in this. I managed to play 180 hours in 22 days, while still having time to recover. I felt great. Of course, I also spent time on strategic preparation, but next time I plan to pay much more attention to this, this is still the first such event and it was not entirely clear what to expect, plus many found out about it quite late.
– What would you change in future championships?
– Actually, not much, the organizers did a great job, gave the opportunity for low and mid stakes regs to compete in the chipEV environment – it's worth a lot. They had a very active Discord during the championship, there was a lot of good feedback, and the organizers take it into account and actively communicate with the participants. It looks like this will be an annual event with a breakdown into more limits.
Yafish summed up the challenge in detail in his telegram channel:
Here's your polished version of the translation. The tone, structure, and context are preserved, but the phrasing is refined to sound like natural, idiomatic English—not a translation:
Yafish in the building. What a battle.
The first two weeks, I couldn’t even show 60% of what I’m capable of. Here’s why, point by point:
1) I only found out about the championship the day before it started. There was zero time to prepare. On top of that, the first week didn’t feature my strongest format. I can play ante, but it’s not really my thing.
2) I spent the first 9 days living with my parents, which made it impossible to fully immerse myself in the game.
3) I had no experience playing in such tough, aggressive lineups. The style of play was completely different from what I’m used to at my regular NL200 tables.
4) A few days in, I hit one of the worst downswings I’ve ever experienced in terms of runouts. I honestly don’t remember anything like it. Maybe I’ve forgotten—this event meant a lot to me. Normally, in a regular grind, I’d just take a break and reset. But here, I had to pull myself together and push on.
Even with all that, I was still fighting for the top spot. Of course I wanted to win. But considering the lack of preparation and my inexperience in these kinds of lineups, making the top 10 feels like a great result.
That said, I’m not thrilled with how I played. I made at least a few major mistakes that were totally avoidable. Normally, I’d step away for a bit after that. But in this format, I had to stay locked in and keep going.
Big thanks to CoinPoker. This is what competitive poker should feel like. To fight for the top, you really have to play well. It’s not some random tournament where 99% of the outcome comes down to luck.
I gained a ton of experience and a real boost toward my long-term goals. I got to play against Munez, Stefan, Avrora, Prodigy, Maddom. Who would’ve thought you could find games like this at low stakes? Watching all the showdowns really helps you grow fast.
When it all comes down to EV, that’s the dream. All month long, you’re happy just to see that you’re ahead—and it doesn’t even matter what runs out on the board. There was even this funny moment when I was happy to lose a hand to a rec, despite having 99% equity. I knew he’d still have a stack left and I’d keep banking EV 😄
In the first week, I stuck with a 95% GTO / 5% exploit mix. But by the final stretch, I switched things up and went 75% exploit, which is totally uncharacteristic for me. I even tossed out some offbeat hands in early position just to build an image 😄. It's risky doing that in tough lineups—especially when everyone can see the cards—but with only a few days left, people don’t always have time to adjust.
Whether or not that shift was correct is still up for debate. I was playing based on overall field tendencies, but the deeper we got, the stronger the remaining regs were, and the dynamics started to shift.
I’m more motivated than ever to keep improving. But for now—I’ve earned a bit of rest. I’m completely drained.
KARACHEVSKII played the championship very hard, he shared his impressions in a blog on the Russian GipsyTeam forum :
– Overall, I'm happy with myself and the form I've gained in a month. I'm not happy with the fact that due to low productivity this year I couldn't play the desired 50k hands, in the middle I took a break for a couple of days due to fatigue. I just sat down and realized that my batteries were dead.
In the middle of the distance KARACHEVSKII assessed the lineup:
– There are enough outright non-walkers, but I am happy to play with those who are at the top, because after NL1K GG and Reg Wars on ACR, the guys create very few difficulties. In fact, now the game is built around those who can quickly adapt to the meta and deal with the most awkward spots, and there are a lot of them there. It is the fish and VIPs who rarely come, but the fact that they exist at all makes me happy.
In the end, his opinion did not change:
– The field played just terribly. In the top with a 10bb win rate there are nits-value bettors who could not make a single bluff three-bet for two days. In my opinion, people with a limp-fold of 90% on the SB should not play with a good win rate. This is, of course, the merit of incompetent regs.
There were good regs too, those who understand the mechanics of the game and try, but the peculiarity of the month-long competition is that everything boils down to grinding. Naturally, no one will show good quality of play under such a heavy load.
