"I Just Felt Like Variance is Not What I Wanted to Experience"
“I just felt like variance is not wanted I want to experience.” Those were the words of RomÄns RovoDiceVoitovs (pictured), a Latvian player who was part of a five-way chop of the PokerStars Sunday Millionlast month for $122,000. One of his chopping partners was Casey bigdogpckt5sJarzabek, who chopped the tournament in back-to-back weeks. There were over 7,300 entrants and nearly $1.5 million was dished out.
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The Sunday Million chop was his first score over $10,000, so he’ll likely remember that day for quite some time. He walked us through the finale of the weekly PokerStars flagship event: “When we got to the final table, I was like 3/9. Things got really fast from there and I busted two guys in a row. The short stacks faded pretty fast. When we were five-handed, I just felt like variance is not what I wanted to experience. So, I asked for everyone if they wanted to see the numbers, everything happened really fast, and we got to the chop. Numbers were presented immediately and everyone agreed pretty fast without any controversy. I got $122,000, which is a totally insane score for me. I was totally glad about that.”
After the chop, $20,000 was on the line for the winner. A hand ensued in which Voitovs had 40 big blinds and 3bet Jarzabek with A-J offsuit. Another player jammed from the small blind with 9-9 and the Latvian came out on the short end of a flip to end. Then, he lost out with A-8 against K-Q to end his run. In that hand, he min-raised pre-flop and then called all-in after an opponent jammed.
Jarzabek‘s (pictured) back-to-back Sunday Million chops will go down as one of the greatest online poker achievements of all-time. Voitovs evaluated, “He played solidly. I played three or four pots against him post-flop. He didn’t do any crazy moves, although there was a really weird hand when in a multiway pot, he check/called two streets and bet/snap-folded the river, which was really confusing. He knows when to choose his spots. I was really careful against him.”
Voitovs is backed and reached that weekend’s Sunday Million via an $11 satellite. He primarily plays 180-man sit and gos and whether he’ll venture off on his own remains to be seen. In the interim, he’s still in school after starting to play $0.01/$0.02 cash games two years ago. He admitted, “I guess poker is not really full-time for me, but these are my only earnings right now.”
We have just over 200 Latvian PocketFives members who have logged tracked scores. We asked Voitovs for a breakdown of how the game is viewed in his home country: “Latvia is a small country. Poker by an average person is observed as gambling, but now it’s becoming more popular and people are starting to acknowledge that it’s more and more a skill game.”
He added, “There has been really big progress in the last few months. The most popular faces we have are bertulsons(pictured), woxix, FeelThePower, and zavor, who are MTT grinders. Some of them have scored pretty big and, overall, poker is becoming more and more popular and advanced.”
Outside of poker, Voitovs works out heavily, calling himself a “bodybuilder.” Asked whether he’ll pump us up like the former Governor of California, Voitovs told us, “I spend a lot of time in the gym and kitchen. I have a balanced nutrition and training program so I could become bigger and leaner.”
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