Seat 1: Seyed Ghavam, 35, Tehran/Iran - 2,124,000
Iranian player Seyed Ghavam is an amateur poker aficionado who is involved in gambling not only as a customer both also from the other side as he runs a sportsbook. Ghavam, who will turn 36 next week, hails from Tehran and while he has a huge passion for poker, he can't play it back home due to legal prohibition. So Ghavam often makes trips to Cyprus to play cash games and occasionally enters tournaments, too. All of his live cashes come almost exclusively from Cyprus, with the biggest prize worth $27,075 for a runner-up finish in a $800 tournament.
Ghavam's sole notch outside of Cyprus was the 84th place finish in the EPT13 Prague Main Event for a €13,830 reward. He's now about to add the Russian flag to his profile, too. Ghavam had accumulated over $73k before arriving for PokerStars Championship Sochi. He currently sits in 19th place on Iran's all-time money list but that's going to change soon. Ghavam could possibly move up to the top five, should he become the champion.
Ghavam's Main Event run has been impressive. He finished every day within the top ten. However, it wasn't smooth all the way for him, especially on Day 4 when his tournament life was on the edge. He ran with pocket queens into aces of Timur Bubnov but dodged the deadly bullet, spiking a queen on the flop to score a huge double up and remain firmly in his seat.