2018 Rock N’ Roll Poker Open 
Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino 
Hollywood, Florida
Event 4
$360 Pot-Limit Omaha 
Entries: 137
Prize Pool: $41,100 
November 16, 2018 

Igor Tretyakov’s first pot-limit Omaha tournament went much better than he could’ve anticipated.

He defeated a field of 137 entries in the $360 pot-limit Omaha on Friday night. He won his first hard rock trophy and $7,673 in a three-way chop.

Treyakov agreed to an even chop with Pavel Bystrov and Alexander Orlov. When they agreed to the deal, Tretyakov was the chip leader and he took credit for the win. Bystrov took second and Orlov finished in third.

The Tampa resident just started playing the game a couple months ago. While not a total novice in the strategy of the game, this is the first time he played the game in a tournament format.

“I don’t know. I’m just a lucky guy,” said Tretyakov. “I just started playing cash PLO two months ago. I was a no-limit hold’em player before that.”

If it wasn’t for a little bit of peer pressure, Tretyakov would still be exclusively be a no-limit hold’em player.

“My friend convinced me,” said Tretyakov of why he decided to switch from two cards to four. “Shout out to Matt.”

The transition seems to be going pretty well. Having only played the game for roughly 60 days, the full-time student at the University of South Florida is already winning tournaments. When it comes to the adjustments he’s had to make with the two extra cards, he just downplays anything he’s learned along the way and likes to chalk it up to positive variance.

“I don’t know. Everything just always goes my way,” said Tretyakov. “I just get it in with ten-nine-jack-whatever with three spades and suck out.”

Tretyakov was making light of the hand he played where he knocked out Stephanie Clayton in fifth place. He check-raised with a semi-bluff and moved all in on the turn. He rivered a straight and shot up the chip counts.

He started the hand in the middle of the pack, but the knockout of Clayton got the ball rolling in the right direction. He knocked out Josh Clanton a few orbits later, took the chip lead and never looked back.

For Tretyakov, this is the continuation of some recent tournament success. This is his second final table at the Seminole Hard Rock Hollywood in as many months.

Last month, Tretyakov finished third in the $250 no-limit hold’em in the October Deep Stack series. He took home $30,225 for that score and last June, he won the Triple 30 at the Seminole Hard Rock Tampa for $9,680.

Tretyakov is in the process of getting his undergraduate degree at USF, but the IT major is hoping that his degree will be irrelevant to the rest of his life.

“I pray that I never have to use it,” said Tretyakov. “Maybe not poker, but maybe something else will come along.”

The top 18 spots finished in the money and here are the results:

1st: Igor Tretyakov – $7,673
2nd: Pavel Bystrov – $7,672
3rd: Alexander Orlov – $7,672
4th: Josh Clanton – $2,589
5th: Stephanie Clayton – $2,014
6th: Edison Barrera – $1,685
7th: Michael Rosenberg – $1,459
8th: Matthew Bretzfield – $1,297
9th: Piragibe Ataide – $1,149
10th: Oleh Ferkalyuk – $1,007
11th: Hamid Kashvari – $1,007
12th: Jason Wells – $1,007
13th: Tony Tran – $873
14th: Aleksey Filatov – $873
15th: William Marsh – $873
16th: Robert Giardini – $750
17th: Aaron Kupin – $750
18th: David Moreno – $750