Artur Martirosian Wins WSOP Paradise Flip & Go Event For Second Career Bracelet

The end of the inaugural World Series of Poker Paradise festival is fast approaching, with several bracelets yet to be awarded before the series concludes on Thursday, Dec. 14. The most recent tournament to conclude at the Atlantis Paradise Island Bahamas was the fast-paced and uniquely structured $800 buy-in Flip & Go event.

After two days of action, it was high-stakes tournament regular Artur Martirosian who came away with the title and the top prize of $110,591. This was the Russian player’s second career bracelet, having earned his first earlier this year by taking down the WSOP Online $10,000 heads-up no-limit hold’em championship for $424,698. The 2021 European Poker Tour Sochi champion now has over $14 million in recorded tournament earnings to his name, with more than $4.4 million of that coming from his successes at the series.

Martirosian is now a top Card Player Player of the Year_ contender, having made 15 qualifying final tables with two titles won along the way. This latest victory saw him earn 456 POY points, enough to climb to 15th place in the 2023 standings presented by Global Poker.

Flip & Go tournaments were first held online on GGPoker and then brought to the live WSOP in 2021. The event begins with an initial ‘flip’ in which a full table of players are forced all-in blind and are dealt a hand of pineapple. They discard one of their three starting cards after seeing a flop and then the rest of the board is dealt out. The winner from each single-table flip makes the money and moves on to the second phase of the event: a brisk no-limit hold’em tournament that plays down to a champion in a more typical fashion.

This event drew 767 entries, with over 80 players winning their flip to move on to day 2 with even 150,000 stacks. Plenty of big names were sent packing on the way to setting the final table, including six-time bracelet winner Shaun Deeb (88th), two-time bracelet winner Chris Brewer (85th), Maria Ho (64th), three0tme bracelet winner Jim Collopy (62nd), two-time bracelet winner Sam Soverel (58th), two-time bracelet winner Erick Lindgren (47th), bracelet winner Stephen Song (34th), six-time bracelet winner Josh Arieh (32nd), three-time World Poker Tour champion Chino Rheem (27th), two-time bracelet winner Jesse Lonis (26th), 2013 WSOP main event champion Ryan Riess (25th), four-time bracelet winner Ben Yu (23rd), and two-time bracelet winner Yuval Bronshtein (12th).

Martirosian held the lead when the field combined onto a single table. He added to his lead when his flopped set of fours bested the top pair of recent $100,000 buy-in event winner Masashi Oya (6th – $19,500). He fell a bit behind during four-handed play, but knocked out Sunghak Lee (4th – $36,700) with pocket kings besting A-8 to get back on track.

Dongwuk Moon eliminated Yuzhou Yin (3rd – $50,800) to take roughly a 4:1 lead into heads-up play with Martirosian. An early double saw that gap quickly narrowed. Martirosian then edged his way ahead and began to pull away. In the final hand, Moon shoved for around 12 big blinds witg Q7 after Martirosian limped from the button with AK. Martirosian quickly called and the A1010QK runout secured him the pot and the title. Moon took home $70,000 as the runner-up finsiher.

Here is a look at the payouts and POY points awarded at the final table:

Photo credit: WSOP / Matthew Berglund.

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