Punta Cana wins for Olvera and Barkevics

Punta Cana wins for Olvera and Barkevics

Monday, 18 November 2013

A busy few days of poker in the Dominican Republic are in the book with Guillermo Olvera taking the Punta Cana Classic and Arturs Barkevics (pictured) winning the William Hill Open.

Olvera worked his way through a field of 490 runners in the sun soaked resort to pocket a first prize of $171,000. The Mexican grinder eventually sealed victory over Chile's Leonal Otaza after a back and forth heads up battle that lasted over two hours and saw the lead swing back and forth on a number of occasions.

The short stacked Otaza finally took a stand with Qd2d but needed help when Otaza flipped over K7, also diamonds. The board helped neither player leaving Otaza to settle with $101,952 for his runner up finish.

Arturs Barkevics showed that you don't need a big bankroll to win big in an exotic location. In fact you don't need a bankroll at all. The Latvian secured his seat in the Caribbean after winning a freeroll promotion on William Hill Poker and enjoyed rather more than a free holiday in the sun. The youngster was down to just six big blinds at the start of the final day but with a bit of luck put that short stack to excellent work.

After Britain's Steve Smith was eliminated in third it was left to Sweden's Nicklas Alf to try and derail the Barkevics comeback.

With Alf down to his final 600k Barkevics raised to 80,000 with the Swede making the call. Alf check-called 95k on the 7h 5c Q board and turned aggressor with an all in check-raise for 400k after the 8h appeared on the turn.

The Latvian tabled 6c9c for a made straight which was plenty good enough against Alf's top pair.

The final table positions and payouts were as follows:


1 Arturs Barkevics Latvia $41,000
2 Nicklas Alf Sweden $24,300
3 Steve Smith United Kingdom $18,000
4 Gavin Jones United Kingdom $14,000
5 Igor Kirillov Russia $11,000
6 Neil Slade United Kingdom $9,000
7 Wang Wenlin China $7,000
8 Valentyn Shabelnyk Ukraine $5,200
9 Jeff Cote Canada $3,800




Tags: Arturs Barkevics, Steve Smith, Punta Cana Classic