Anatoly Nikitin's Entire Final-Table Career Started Five Days Ago

The Post-it Note Résumé

Anatoly Nikitin's entire final-table résumé fits on a Post-it note: two appearances, both at the 2026 WSOP, both in the span of a few days.

He has $493,304 in lifetime tournament cashes. Zero bracelets. Zero rings. And he just bagged 3,250,000 chips — the biggest stack at the final table of the $5,000 8-Handed No-Limit Hold'em.

He has $493,304 in lifetime cashes, zero bracelets, zero rings, and the chip lead at a $5K final table.

Nobody at This Table Has a Bracelet

Here's the part that makes this final table strange: not a single player among the top five stacks has ever won WSOP gold. Ivan Ruban sits second with 2,300,000 chips and $1,008,860 in lifetime earnings — the only seven-figure résumé at the table — but no bracelet. Xiaohu Liu is third at 1,910,000 with just $309,388 career earnings and two lifetime final tables. Zexiang Sun, fourth at 1,700,000, has $17,586 to his name. Charles Alex-Barton rounds out the top five at 1,690,000 with $239,396.

This isn't a final table full of bracelet hunters on their fifteenth deep run. It's a table where everyone is knocking on the same door for the first time.

The Counter-Argument Is Obvious — and Wrong

Sure, you could argue a thin résumé means Nikitin is a tourist who ran hot. But running hot doesn't get you the chip lead of a $5K eight-handed event. The buy-in alone filters out most recreational fields, and eight-handed play punishes passive poker relentlessly. Two final tables at the same series isn't a heater — it's a signal.

What I Actually Think

Nikitin is the kind of player the WSOP was built for. Not the face on the broadcast, not the guy with the sponsorship patch, not the 47-time final tablist grinding out another min-cash ladder. He's a player from Russia with under half a million in career earnings who showed up, found two final tables in his first handful of events, and now leads one of them.

If he wins, his lifetime earnings roughly triple in a single hand. If he doesn't, he still doubled his final-table count in under a calendar week.

Either way, the Post-it note just got more interesting.