Alexey 'NoPasaran' Makarov scores big in Omaha

In the absence of the big U.S. poker players, several Russian poker players have stepped up to provide additional high stakes PLO action and none more so than Alexey "NoPasaran" Makarov. Makarov was a member of the initial PokerStars team online pros from having played and won for years as "Lucky Gump." He won a PLO SCOOP event in 2010 for $150k to show his prowess in PLO tournaments as well as cash games. In the last year, he has stepped up his game and limits to play the higher stakes games on Full Tilt Poker.

Interestingly, Makarov has killed the PokerStars $25/$50 PLO games for years, over 380k hands he is showing a $2.3 million dollar profit on PokerStars. When he has attempted to play higher he has struggled losing over $700k at $100/$200 PLO, lost $166k at 50/100 PLO heads-up, and lost $193k over 4700 hands at $200/$400 PLO all on PokerStars. It may have been one reason he wanted to try out Full Tilt Poker for a change of pace or luck.

In this particular encounter, NoPasaran battled Esvedra over four sessions and 1814 hands of $300/$600 PLO action before NoPasaran left with a $227k profit. The session was emblematic of how the respective poker players have been doing in 2011 on Full Tilt Poker.

NoPasaran has been running well in very good overall this year and is up more than $1.8 million while Esvedra has been putting up poor results and he is down much more than $1 million.