Cyprus' Merit Royal Diamond Hotel Casino & Spa brought us a new tournament called Merit Millions, which guaranteed $1,000,000 to the winner with a buy-in of $10,400.
The tournament saw 212 entries, bringing the prizepool to $1,950,400. 30 players made it to the final day, but only the top 9 players could make it to the ITM.
Sitting at the final table as chipleader was Turkish player Rafael Aslanli. The best known and most experienced player here was Bulgarian player Boris Kolev, who also has two WSOP bracelets to his name. Boris Kolev started the final table with the third largest stack.
It didn't take long for Boris to become the chipleader. He then held that position until the final heads-up where he was facing Mehdi Chaoui from Morocco. The difference between first and second place was as much as $700,000. However, Boris Kolev eventually finished what he started and became the Merit Millions champion. He took home $1,000,000, his highest career win, to take his live tournament earnings over the $5.2 million mark.
| 1 | Boris Kolev | Bulgaria | 1.000.000$ |
| 2 | Mehdi Chaoui | Morocco | 300.000$ |
| 3 | Roman Lihacov | Latvia | 200.000$ |
| 4 | Aleksandr Kirichenko | Russia | 140.000$ |
| 5 | Rafael Aslanli | Turkey | 100.000$ |
| 6 | Maksim Shornikau | Belarus | 75.000$ |
| 7 | Andrey Pateychuk | Russia | 55.000$ |
| 8 | Ali Al-Kubasi | Iraq | 45.000$ |
| 9 | Alexandr Lakhov | Russia | 35.400$ |
Source - Pokernews, Merit Poker
