While many thought it wouldn’t go ahead, Ruslan Bogdanov was raring and ready to go when called upon. Just a couple of days later, he is the EPT Sochi champion and approximately $204,498 better off.

With the current global Coronavirus pandemic meaning live poker is operating on something of a reduced schedule, many of the larger live tours have moved online for 2020, with operators such as Unibet Poker, PokerStars and partypoker all shifting many of their highest profile events online. With the addition of an online WSOP series rather than a live one this year, coupled with GGPoker’s phenomenal growth, poker has become more of a fluid game, sometimes live but more often online, with a creativity and vibrancy to that shift.

Players have responded, too, with any fears about numbers allayed by the turnouts across events such as the WSOP Online Main Event.

When the European Poker Tour announced that their Sochi stop would go ahead, mid-pandemic, many questioned the decision. Was it morally right to host a poker tournament with COVID-19 so contagious?