Every time the World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) rolls round you know that it’s going to throw up some surprises, but no one could have anticipated the dream story of Marat ‘maratik’ Sharafutdinov. Last year Russian low-stakes player maratik, a taxi driver by day, managed to satellite into the $5,200 WCOOP Main Event from an outlay of 40 Frequent Player Points, the equivalent of 11.4% of a car air freshener from the VIP shop.
Not only did maratik make the final table and find himself holding the second-largest stack during the six-handed deal negotiations, but he was also bold enough to tell the table ‘I wont million’ when shown his suggested $922,907.26 payout. As it was, maratik agreed to take a cut on that (to appease chip leader and online reg Mike ‘MunchenHB’ Telker) with the knowledge that should he win, and take the $100,000 set aside for the winner, he’d still break the million dollar mark. And win he did.
It was an incredible story, one which gave birth to a great poker catchphrase ‘I wont million’, and there’s nothing to say that it can’t happen again. I’m not going to be so much of a tease to say, ‘It could be you,’ but, well, it could. Satellites, for cash and for FPPs, are set to get a lot of players into the Main Event for a fraction of the cost of the $5,200 buy-in. You can find all the satellites in the PokerStars lobby by clicking ‘Events’ > ‘WCOOP’ and you can also check out the full WCOOP schedule here.
Do you wont million?
Rick Dacey is a staff writer for the PokerStars Blog.
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