Kings of Tallinn 2023 – Where All Fairytales Are Made
We're just over a week into the incredible 10-day Kings of Tallinn event, and we're still reeling in the final numbers from this event. Consisting of 53 tournaments with buy-ins ranging from €60 to €3,000, the Baltics' most thrilling event, held at the Olympic Park Casino located in the beautiful Hilton Tallinn Park Hotel, broke the guaranteed prize pools that were factored in beforehand by a mile. We take you on a journey back in time to summarize the top events and let you relive the great atmosphere of it all.
Mystery Bounties and More
The Kings of Tallinn organizers are well-known in regards of listening to its players. For this reason, a stunning three Mystery Bounty events were part of the schedule, from which the €150 GGPoker Flip&Go Mystery Bounty event, was the most electric of them all. Besides the glorious Main Event, High Roller and the €555 Championship, there were tons of different games available. Games such as PL Omaha and Sviten Special are not to be missed, but games as 8-game, Open Face Chinese and Soko, were also highly appreciated by the mixed games players who would attend the event.
An impressive 1,361 unique players, from 35 different countries managed to find their way to the capital city of Estonia, securing a total prize pool of a staggering €2,3 million for the whole event. The Main Event (€673.040), the High Roller (€218,456), and the €555 Championship (€262,730) were the biggest tournaments among them all.
Main Event - It’s Coming Home!
The Main Event gathered an excellent 716 entries, and in the last stages of the event it was eventually Estonian’s Priit Parmasto who won the event, after a deal had been made with the last three contestants in the likes of the Fins Petteri Laiho and Antti Vetelainen. Just like in the first ever Main Event of the Kings of Tallinn, back in 2015, it was an Estonian walking away with the most honorable trophy along with the grand first prize of €97.400. Despite that, it wasn’t Parmasto who took home the biggest prize, as Laiho bagged a nice six-figure score of €102,500!
The last hand of the day would decide who would walk away with the title and an additional €15.000, which had to be kept on the side of the deal. It was Laiho who opened up the action to 700,000, on which Parmasto 3-bet to 2,000,000. Action was back on Laiho, who decided to put it all in the middle, and Parmasto snapped it off.
Petteri Laiho: 5 5
Priit Parmasto: 7 7
Laiho was looking for a 2-outer to be able to stay alive. Sadly for him, no help appeared on the board and we would have a winner in the likes of Parmasto:
2 K 2 10 3
With this hand a great Main Event came to an end. We gathered the final table payouts for you:
| Place | Name | Country | Prize |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Priit Parmasto | Estonia | €97,400* |
| 2 | Petteri Laiho | Finland | €102,500* |
| 3 | Antti Vetelainen | Finland | €90,000* |
| 4 | Davide Muccini | Italy | €40,040 |
| 5 | Ignas Vaitulionis | Lithuania | €29,800 |
| 6 | Aleksi Naski | Finland | €22,500 |
| 7 | Sergejs Korobovs | Latvia | €17,600 |
| 8 | Danius Antanaitis | Lithuania | €14,200 |
| 9 | Albert Ostrovskij | Lithuania | €11,900 |
High Roller Became a Prey for Finland’s Kimmo Fagerhold
With a buy-in of €3.000, the High Roller was by far the biggest buy-in of the event series. As always in Tallinn, many well-known regulars would give acte de présence and try to take down the title. GGPoker’s ambassadors Nial Farrell and Anatoly Filatov, Roope Tarmi, Jussi Mattila, all entered the field of 83 entries.
Kimmo Fagerholm, an online poker regular from Finland, took down the whole lot by defeating GGPoker pro Anatoly Filatov. Who is Russians number #9 on the all-time-money-list. Filatov, with over $5 million in live cashes, of which two $1 million cashes, couldn’t find the win as Fagerholm just was on a streak. Fagerholm took home the grand first prize and can call himself the High Roller Champion of the Kings of Tallinn. Hereby the fesults:
| Place | Name | Country | Prize |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kimmo Fagerholm | Finland | € 63,156 |
| 2 | Anatoly Filatov | Russia | € 43,200 |
| 3 | Ermo Kosk | Estonia | € 29,800 |
| 4 | Juho Suutari | Finland | € 20,300 |
| 5 | Mikko Ylämäki | Finland | € 14,600 |
| 6 | Ville Jantunen | Finland | € 11,000 |
| 7 | Casper Von Schantz | Finland | € 9,100 |
| 8 | Elias Suhonen | Finland | € 8,000 |
| 9 | Viktors Caikins | Latvia | € 7,100 |
€555 Championship – Vive Le France
The Warm-Up Championship kicked off earlier in the week and it attracted a solid 559 entries, resulting in a massive first prize of €55,500. Ironically when thinking about the buy-in of €555. After a grind of 17 hours on day two, it was the Frenchman Benjamin Gros who secured himself a place in the history books by defeating Lithuanian Rokas Barzdzius. It was the first ever big scoop of Gros in his live poker career.
| Place | Name | Country | Prize |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Benjamin Gros | France | € 55,500 |
| 2 | Rokas Barzdzius | Lithuania | € 37,500 |
| 3 | Tarmo Tammel | Estonia | € 22,200 |
| 4 | Paulius Vaitiekunas | Lithuania | € 16,200 |
| 5 | Zydrunas Karcemarskas | Lithuania | € 12,700 |
| 6 | Alger Pissarev | Estonia | € 9,540 |
| 7 | Juuso Kauppi | Finland | € 7,000 |
| 8 | Janne Ojala | Finland | € 4,790 |
| 9 | LuigiShehadeh | Italy | € 3,420 |
GGPoker Mystery Flip&Go
One of the many new events on the schedule of Kings of Tallinn was the €150 GGPoker Mystery Flip&Go tournament. A tournament which consisted out of two stages. The first stage was beind held throughout the whole week and it was a one-hand flip game. All together, 34 players lucked themselves into the final stage, which got played out as a standard tournament. However, the prestigious Mystery Bounties came in play.
Mystery Bounties often make it happen that another player as the first place finisher, is walking away with the biggest cash of the day. And this tournament was no different as Ranno Sootla, finishing 4th overall, took home four bounties totaling €8.700, including the biggest bounty of them all of €5.000.
| Place | Name | Country | Prize |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Keimo Suominen | Finland | € 4,130 |
| 2 | Egon Kaljulaid | Estonia | € 2,813 |
| 3 | Saulius Tumosa | Lithuania | € 2,000 |
| 4 | Ranno Sootla | Estonia | € 1,450 |
| 5 | Niall Farrell | Great Britain | € 1,100 |
Make sure to play the next event at Olympic Park Casino in Tallinn - the popular Tallinn Summer Showdown July 24th and onwards.
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Photos by: Elena Kask & Tambet Kask.
