OFC Takes Another Step with a Record Grand Prix

May 7, 2015   No comments

Open-Face Chinese Poker experienced one of its biggest online events in the last few weeks, with the OFC Grand Prix that was hosted by TonyBet, the leading provider of Open-Face Chinese Poker in the online world. As well as hosting a number of events, it also hosted what became the biggest cash prize in online OFC history.


In fact, the whole Grand Prix was the biggest Open-Face Chinese Poker online event in history, a major milestone for the game and one that will surely lead to bigger and better things. This event reminded us of where Open-Face Chinese Poker came from, where it grew and where it first became really popular, as this event was dominated by the Russian players. Of course, OFC didn’t start in Russia but in Finland, yet when it made it to Russia it really took off.


The High Roller event is where the record was and this event was won by Sergey Rybachenko, a player that is focusing on OFC almost exclusively and has made a big name for himself in this game. He dominated a field of 22 player to win a huge grand prize, one of the biggest cash prizes in the history of online Open-Face Chinese Poker in fact.

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OFC Takes Another Step with a Record Grand Prix

With the speed that Open-Face Chinese Poker is advancing at, it is unlikely that Rybachenko will hold onto this record for long, but he may also pick up a few more record of his own as these events get bigger and more widespread.

Other big winners at the Grand Prix included many more Russians, but there was also some variety in the field, and this shows just how popular Open-Face Chinese Poker is all over the world. The Main Event was won by a player with the tag “drinu29”, who scooped just less than 3 million Euros in an event that wasn’t as rich as the High Roller, but did have 41 players, nearly twice as many as joined the High Roller event. This is still a little on the short side, and you would undoubtedly see far greater numbers for Omaha and Texas Hold’em, but the fact that this was a pot of 7,000 Euros, and that over a hundred players got involved during the course of the Grand Prix, not to mention the many who tried to gain access via satellites, is very promising.

As with the other major online events, it’s not just about the tournaments themselves, but also about the overall event leaderboard. As with the Spring Series of Online Poker and the World Series of Online Poker, you climb up this leaderboard by winning tournaments and finishing in the money. The OFC Grand Prix was weighted fairly evenly, so that those who won the major events didn’t necessarily get a free ticket to the top of the leaderboard. This is why the overall winner of the Grand Prix, “deda35” was not even in the top five of the Main Event or the High Roller — the two biggest tournaments during this series.

“Deda35” made it to the top through consistent play. He played 16 of the 17 OFC Grand Prix events and as well as making it to three final tables, in which he didn’t go on to claim the grand prize, he also won a further two. His prize for this is not as great as the ones taken down by the Main Event or High Roller Champions mentioned above, but he will be given a ticket to the OFC World Championship, which is an annual tournament that will is due to be held in Prague during the final month of 2015. From here he can win much money cash than he claimed in this online series, but the competition will be just as fierce, if not more so.

Some of the best news to come out of the OFC Grand Prix hosted by TonyBet is that it exceed expectations. There was an understandable fear with the event hosts that the buy-ins for many of the tournaments would not cover the guaranteed money. This would mean that the tournaments were running at a considerable loss and it would have been bad news for the future of this event and for the future of online OFC on the whole. However, there was nothing to worry about. The Main Event alone received 50% more buy-ins than the guaranteed amount, taking the prize pool from 5,000 to 7,500, and the other events, especially the High Roller, were just as popular.

This is fantastic news for the game and for TonyBet, and it means that if you missed this OFC Grand Prix, you need not worry as you can almost certainly rely on another one being run this time next year.

TonyBet took a risk, but it paid off, and thanks to them the world of online OFC has taken a huge step forward.