Liv Boeree and Igor Kurganov Win WSOP Tag Team Championship

Liv Boeree and Igor Kurganov one of the poker world’s power couples have won the 2017 World Series of Poker (WSOP) $10,000 Tag Team no-limit hold’em event taking home the first prize of $273,964. Runners up Ankush Mandavia and Joe Kuether took the second place winning $169,323.

The talented tag team of Boeree and Kurganov beat a field of 102 teams, each of which comprised two to four players. The newly-introduced team event in the 2017 WSOP is similar to a regular no-limit hold’em tournament with a few differences.

Team members play with a shared stack of chips with each player tagging another as and when required. Each player must however play through one full orbit during the course of the event. There are no breaks in this format as players can tag out when tired.

This is the first WSOP bracelet win for both Boeree and Kurganov, although both have impressive records as individual poker players. In his eight-year long career as a Russian pro Kurganov has notched up several major wins, netting him live poker earnings of $12 million and placing him on top of the Russian poker player rankings. British born Boeree has total live poker winnings of $3 million and is ranked 18th in the all-time English poker players list.

Raising for Effective Giving (REG Charity)

Each will be taking home $136,982 from their first WSOP win. Boeree and Kurganov have both announced that they would be donating half of their earnings to a charity organization set up by them called REG (Raising for Effective Giving).

Boeree and Kurganov faced a tough challenge towards the end with the final table having formidable opponents like Daniel Negreanu and Martin Jacobson to name a few. Overall 23 players were playing at the final table as a result of the event structure.

Team Negreanu was placed third after losing out against Kurganov. That team will be sharing winnings of $119,753 between them. The final round saw heads-up play of 90 hands between Kurganov and Mandavia. Kurganov held on to the lead for much of the play finally beating Mandavia comprehensively in the end

Reacting to the win Kurganov said he was delighted to win a bracelet along with his partner while Boeree said she was thrilled to win the title. In a statement Kurganov said

The money is nice, but for me it’s winning the bracelets together that matters the most when comparing the ratio of people that are happy from the cash to having the hardware.