Mikita Badziakouski

In September 2019, Mikita Badziakouski won £50,000 NLHE at the British Poker Open 2019. Mikita defeated Cristoph Vogelsand Heads-Up To Earn £486,000. As of February 2020, Badziakouski has earned over $220,000 playing high stakes online cash games on PokerStars and has won over $26,000,000 from live poker tournaments. He is the all-time money. Mikita Badziakouski is one of the best poker players. This year, he already won several huge tournaments, which gave him the opportunity to rise in the overall world ranking of the best poker players from 119th place to the 28th.

He surpassed John Juanda in the all-time money list on Tuesday evening as he won Event #9 of the British Poker Open, and Mikita Badziakouski caught up with Remko Rinkema after winning to explain a little about his recent rise in tournament poker legend. He started with the feeling of winning his first British Poker Open event.

“It was a nice tournament,” said the Belarussian, “You’re always happy when you’re winning because you get into the end of the tournament. It means that you like experienced every single stage and I loved it.”

Relive the final table of the Single Day £50,000 High Roller on PokerGO right now featuring Christoph Vogelsang, Mikita Badziakouski, Sam Greenwood, and David Peters.

Badziakouski’s enthusiasm is only matched by his recent success. Put simply, the Belarussian player is a phenomenon. Possibly the least well-known of the players at the upper limits of the all-time money list, Badziakouski has won more money in poker tournaments than either Scott Seiver, Phil Hellmuth or the aforementioned Juanda. He’s a million shy of overtaking the great Phil Ivey.

“The money part is definitely more important. I’m always going to focus more on EV and the rest is fun. but I love to have that feeling of winning.”

With so much success, motivation could be an issue, but as the young man who isn’t yet 28 explains, although it’s very tough competing against such talented high rollers, he maintains his hunger.

“Some people might be increasing their skills faster than I do now but I’m still trying. I like the feeling of being in the top group of players and I’ve been in poker for 10 years. That’s what I’m doing in my life and that motivates me – I want to do it like in the best possible way.”

Still younger than many other top-level pros, Badziakouski feels like he has the physical and mental strength to go hard at the top level of the game for the next few years.

I feel like I’m definitely giving myself time, at least until I’m 30 and I still have two and a half years. I’m fine with grinding more; it really depends on my financial situation and how I feel about it. I’m enjoying it.”

Badziakouski hails from Belarus, but rarely get to play when his family and friends are around him. He – and they – appreciate the PokerGO streams more than most, and they get to experience a little of the adrenaline he does whenever their hero is on screen.

“They really support me and they enjoy the ‘sweat’. For us for poker players, we know all this, gambling has become so regular that you’re constantly getting this adrenaline. But for the people that are not involved, those are nice emotions to feel. I’m glad that they actually get to watch the streams and I’m happy to share my success with them.”

Mikita Badziakouski Wins EPT Online $10k High Roller For $222,453

Badziakouski may be a hero to many poker fans, as he is to his family and friends, but to many in Belarus, he’s just a regular person going about his normal job. It seems to suit the modest man who has just won the lion’s share of half a million British pounds.

It’s just what he does.

Watch the final table of the £100,000 British Poker Open Event #10 on PokerGO featuring Badziakouski, Christoph Vogelsang, Cary Katz, and Ben Tollerene.

Mikita Badziakouski returned for Day 2 of Event #4: $50,000 No Limit Hold’em as chip leader and sailed through to victory with aggressive play and a little heads up deck-based help against eventual runner-up Artur Martirosyan. He collected $765,000 after seeing off a star-studded final table, whittled from 45 entries, to add yet another high roller trophy to his already bulging cabinet.

Recap all Live Reporting coverage from this event here and check out the full final table stream on PokerGO here.

A total prize pool of $2,250,000 was awarded on today’s seven-handed final table, the largest generated so far at the partypoker LIVE MILLIONS Super High Roller Series Sochi. The first payout went to Wiktor “limitless” Malinowski, the online specialist running king-queen into the ace-king of Martirosyan on the second hand dealt.

While Badziakouski relentlessly picked up pots, Martirosyan too was active in the early stages of the final table, overtaking the Belarusian just before Cary Katz was eliminated in sixth place ($135,000). Katz was playing his second final this week (having finished fourth in Event #1: $25,000 Short Deck for $105,000 on Saturday) but never got the momentum going for a trophy run on this one. His eliminator, Sam Greenwood (who won a preflop flip with king-jack vs. Katz’s pocket sixes), had ducked and weaved his start-of-day short stack into what was now an above average one, prompting a tablemate on the stream to call him a “short stack ninja.”

Sam Greenwood was to see all his hard work undone shortly after Katz’s exit, however, as he ran ace-queen into Badziakouski’s pocket kings, finishing 5^th for $180,000. While Sam was one of three players to have already banked more than $20 million in live earnings (the others the eventual winner and Katz), the Greenwood family continued to be represented on the table by Luc, who went on to finish third, winning $337,500.

Before Luc Greenwood’s exit, Aaron Van Blarcum hit the rail in fourth place. Another premium for Badziakouski, this time ace-king, knocked out Van Blarcum who, now short himself, had made his move with ace-nine. This was Van Blarcum’s third final table of the series; considering there have only been four events it has been a blistering performance so far by the American, who added $225,000 to his winnings with this finish.

It took under 15 minutes to lose these three players from the final, which was suddenly heads up, the two early risers battling for the title through three levels. It looked at one point that Martirosyan was out for the count, after a queen-high river hero call that backfired, but he rallied to challenge Badziakouski all the way to a dramatic finish. The final hand saw Martirosyan, having flopped trips, one card away from a double to snatch the chip lead, but Badziakouski called his river shove with a gutshot/flush draw combo draw and hit his flush on the river to end the tournament.

Martirosyan, hitherto a bit of an unknown quantity, picked up $495,000 for his second place finish, adding to the $87,000 he took for sixth place in Event #2: $25,000 No Limit Hold’em. Badzikouski, meanwhile, despite self-describing as a “fish” as he made the final call, has now upped his total live earnings to nearly $27 million.

Full Payouts:

Mikita Badziakouski Online

Tomorrow’s live stream (7am EDT/2pm local time) features the final of the $50,000 Short Deck (live reporting from Day 1 can be found here) and coverage will resume along with the cards up broadcast on PokerGO.