Final Table Interview: Alex Bolotin
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Alex Bolotin began playing poker at the beginning of the poker boom and saw his first big results come in 2006 with a couple of deep runs, including his first final table. Since then he has earned over $2 million in live tournament cashes.
We caught up with Bolotin as the players at the Event #6 final table went on their second break of the day.
How have things been going today? Is everything going according to plan?
It’s been going great. I have been running really well. A couple of people that I have been worried about got knocked out. The guy who is second in chips is a really good player, he won the PCA Main Event for like $2 million plus a couple of other events. The other guy also seems solid, but I haven’t seen him before so he can’t be the best ever. So yeah, so far so good.
Any memorable hands along the way?
We only started with 12 today. I won a big hand where I doubled up. Shawn Busse, a very good online player, was the small blind. I raised the big blind with ace-king and he called me with queen-ten off. Flop came ten-four-three with two diamonds, I have ace-king of diamonds. He checked, I bet, he raised me and I shipped it. He called it off and I was a slight favorite in the hand and I won the flip. So that hand was big.
The huge hand four-handed was against Josh Arieh. He opens under the gun. I have aces in the big blind, I three bet and he calls. Flop comes queen-ten-seven two hearts and I bet. He raises me, I guess he could have a top pair there. He was chipleader at the time but I ship it in for a good amount and he called it with a set of tens. I caught my ace on the turn which was huge. That’s the hand that propelled me to the chip lead and now I am going to close it out.
How did you find the field in this tournament? Any other tough opponents that you encountered along the way?
On my second day I beat Jordan Young heads up. I got really lucky there. He was number one online in 2011 - he’s a very accomplished online player. There were actually a lot of really good players in this small buy in event.
I heard you really wanted to play the Millionaire Maker. Were you sad to be missing it?
Very much so. I was thinking of double dipping. I decided it is the more mature and professional thing to do to concentrate on one tournament at a time. It looks like it was a good decision.