Eirik Kristiansen Takes Down the Festival in Tallinn Main Event
Norway's Eirik Kristiansen became the second-ever winner of The Festival Series Main Event champion after defeating Finland's Jari Mähönen heads-up to win The Festival Series Tallinn €550 Main Event for €56,100 at the luxurious Olympic Park Casino and the adjoining Hilton Tallinn Park.
Kristiansen began the day as the chip leader and despite coughing it up multiple times throughout the final table remained calm, cool, and collected throughout the final day en route to hoisting the coveted trophy.
The victory was easily the biggest live poker tournament success story for Kristiansen who came into the event with five relatively small poker tournament cashes as tracked by The Hendon Mob, each under $1,000, for a total of $2,209.
Despite Kristiansen being near the top of the chip counts throughout the day, he came from behind against a formidable opponent in Mähönen, who regularly plays tournaments in Tallinn and has amassed more than $500,000 in lifetime tournament earnings, to win the title.
The Festival Series Tallinn Final Table Payouts
| Place | Player | Country | Prize |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Eirik Kristiansen | Norway | €56,100 |
| 2 | Jari Mähönen | Finland | €36,120 |
| 3 | Kristoffer Winterstein | Sweden | €22,040 |
| 4 | Mikael Viggander | Sweden | €16,200 |
| 5 | Jero Keitaanranta | Finland | €12,100 |
| 6 | Rando Liiber | Estonia | €9,100 |
| 7 | Toivo Ojasoo | Estonia | €6,700 |
| 8 | Gregory Partridge | United Kingdom | €5,100 |
| 9 | Sascha Manns | Germany | €3,950 |
The Festival Series Tallinn Main Event was a smashing success after attracting 552 entries to generate a juicy €264,960 prize pool. The top 71 players were awarded at least a €1,100 min-cash with five players collecting at least a five-figure prize.
Final Table Action
After four opening flights along with two more days of play, the action-packed Main Event was down to a final table of nine hopefuls with WPT Global online qualifier Oleksandra Shenderei hit the rail on the final table bubble after her fives failed to win a flip against the ace-jack held by Estonia's Rando Liiber.
Germany's Sascha Manns and Estonia's Toivo Ojasoo, who qualified via Coolbet Poker, entered the final table as the short stacks. The day didn't last long for Manns. In fact, it just took one hand to the rail in ninth place. To the disappointment to the tremendous community at the Malta Poker Fish community, who were also rooting on Sweden's Mikael Viggander, Manns was unable to win a crucial early flip with eights against king-jack to be the first player to live the lights and cameras on the live-streamed final table.
Ojasoo managed to ladder one more spot after doubling up. Instead, it was the United Kingdom's Gregory Partridge to hit the rail next in eighth place when his ace-queen was out-flipped by the fishhooks held by Sweden's Kristoffer Winterstein. Partridge won more than what will be officially reported on his The Hendon Mob profile as he also won the last longer contest for those entering the tournament via Luxon Pay to give him his buy-in back on top of his tournament earnings.
Not too much later, the two Estonians remaining in Ojasoo and Liiber were out. Ojasoo got it in with top pair but was unable to hold against the nut-flush draw held by Viggander. Meanwhile, Liiber's jacks ran into Winterstein's queens and a short while later the first chip lead change occurred at the final table with Winterstein as the captain.
Before long, Kristiansen regained the lead before eliminating both Viggander and Finland's Jero Keitaanranta and had approximately double of the stacks of his two remaining opponents shortly after the three-way handed began.
The momentum shifted to Mahonen shortly after that as he doubled through Winterstein before taking the chip lead with a flush against Kristiansen. On the other end of things, Winterstein was down to crumbs before doubling up twice to get a little bit of breathing room. However, his king-six proved to be worthless against Mahonen's king-queen and Mahonen began the heads-up action with double the stack of Kristiansen.
Despite players holding deep stacks during heads-up play, the action was fast and furious. Kristiansen doubled-up into the chip lead when his ace-seven held against king-jack. Shortly after, Kristiansen jammed with queen-deuce after the five-four-three landed on the flop and was called by Mahonen's nine-five. A blank king came on the turn and it appeared likely that Mahonen would double back into the chip lead. Instead, an ace spiked the river and the rest was history.
Congrats to Eirik Kristiansen from the team at PokerListings on his epic win in The Festival Series Tallinn Main Event!
Side Events Galore
The Festival Series boasted around 40 different events from June 27 to July 3. While most of the events were in no-limit hold'em format, there was plenty for mixed game players as well with events in H.O.R.S.E., 8-Game, Sviten Special, PLO, OFC, and more.
There were plenty of ways to qualify for these events both before with a plethora of online partners and during with a handful of satellites along with rake-free flip sit-and-go's frequently running where players could win seats to upcoming events.
In addition, The Festival Series hosted plenty of fun casino events as well with multi-day Blackjack and Roulette tournaments on top of a fun slots and sportsbook events as well.
Some impressions from the Festival Queens event:
The Festival Series Online
For the first time, The Festival Series will move to the virtual felts with an amazing series at 888poker from July 7 to August 1. The Festival Series Online boasts $750,000 in guaranteed across 20 events with buy-in for everyone ranging from as low as $1 to as high as $215 as will be the case for what promises to be an amazing $150,000 guaranteed Main Event.
Qualify for The Festival Series Bratislava
The Festival Series Online isn't the only thing to get excited about as The Festival Series soon enough will head back to where it all began with The Festival Series heading back to Banco Casino, located in the heart of the Slovakian capital of Bratislava from October 10-16.
The full schedule will be released shortly, but let's just say that The Festival Series has stepped it up several notches for this event as it will guarantee a €500,000 prize pool for its €550 Main Event, representing nearly double that of the successful Main Event this week.
