– General Information –
Mikita Badziakouski, sometimes alternatively spelled as Nikita Badziakouski, is a Belarusian professional poker player. He was born on February 6th, 1992.
He’s achieved great success at the poker table at a very young age. He was cashing in mid-stakes tournaments in Ukraine by the time he was just 18. He was a winning player in the high stakes cash games on PokerStars by the age of 19.
On PS, he plays under the screen name “fish2013” – an alias that became iconic in the poker world. Because of his long and complicated last name, many often refer to him as such even when he’s playing live tournaments.
As for live tournaments, he’s cashed for over $31 million. He regularly plays in the Triton Series’ super high roller events, of which he’s won three so far. He’s also a WSOP gold bracelet winner.
– Key Career Dates –
- 2010: He starts playing events in the mid-stakes tournament series Russian Poker Tour in Ukraine.
- 2011: He starts playing high stakes cash games on PokerStars under the screen name “fish2013”.
- 2018: He wins the HK2,000,000 Triton Super High Roller Series Main Event for $5,257,027 in Jeju, South Korea. That is his biggest single live tournament cash to date.
- 2018: He wins the €100,000 Super High Roller at the EPT in Barcelona for $1.913 million.
- 2019: He wins the Triton Poker Super High Roller Series Montenegro HK$750,000 Short Deck – Ante Only event for $1.694 million.
- 2019: He crushes the Aria Summer High Rollers with 3 wins and one 3rd place finish for a combined $750k.
- 2020: He wins the partypoker MILLIONS Sochi Super High Roller Series $51,000 event for $765,000 right before finishing 3rd in the $250,000 Super High Roller Bowl at the same event for $1.6 million.
- 2021: He wins his first WSOP gold bracelet after finishing first in the $50,000 No Limit Hold’em High Roller event for $1.462 million.
– Mikita Badziakouski’s Career –
→ Beginnings ←
Badziakouski didn’t have time to find a civil profession, or to even start majoring in a subject in university. By the time he was 18, he was playing poker for a living.
He recanted the way he fell in love with his favorite card game at such a young age on the partypoker Pro Blog:
“It’s been a decade already and I hope this affair is only going to continue. When I was 5 years old I started learning chess and when I got to 10 I was already spending hours playing card games. At the age of 12, I’ve firstly tried sports betting which became my prime interest for the next 4 years until I’ve met poker. I could certainly say that since I was a kid my biggest passions were intellectual rivalry and gambling, so poker was the ideal mix of both. I was due to become obsessed with a game.
My first interaction with poker happened at the age of 16 when I watched episodes of Main Event WSOP and the idea of coming to this special event became one of my dreams.”
He first started earning money online playing lower stakes, then began cashing in live tournaments regularly, and finally, he also started to play the highest stakes cash games on Stars.
→ Live Tournaments ←
According to his Hendon page, Badziakouski has cashed for over $31.2 million in live tournaments during his career. That number is a product of just 78 different ITM finishes in tournaments around the world.
Evidently, he tops the list for Belarusian players by miles – Ihar Soika is second with just $3.488 million. Among all players, Badziakouski is constantly in one of the respectable top 20 spots.
As we wrote in our intro, his earliest live results are from events that took place in Ukraine. More specifically, they’re from the annual Kyiv stop of the Russian Poker Tour.
The very first score on his scoresheet is 4th place finish for $5,610 in a $550 No Limit Hold’em event. The first time he cashed in an event outside the Russian Poker Tour was over 5 years after he started playing live tournaments. In May 2015, he finished 28th in the €25,000 EPT High Roller for €46,400 in Monte Carlo.
The first time he delivered a 6-figure live cash was also at the European Poker Tour and also in Monte Carlo. He finished 6th in the €50,000 Super High Roller for €210,530 in May of 2016.
He started playing the Triton High Roller Series’ events in 2017. He managed to take down three of those, two in the same year.
In May 2018, he won the HK$1,000,000 NLHE Triton Super High Roller Main Event for $2.499 million in Montenegro. In July 2018, he triumphed in the HK2,000,000 Triton Super High Roller Series Main Event for $5.257 million in Jeju, South Korea. That is the biggest single live tournament score of his career to date.
In August 2018, he took down the €100,000 Super High Roller event at EPT Barcelona for €1.65 million. His other major live cashes include a 3rd place finish for €1.52 million in the €111,111 High Roller for one Drop at the 2017 WSOP Europe; as well as a 4th place finish in the $300K Aria Super High Roller Bowl for $1.6 million in May 2018.
Mikita kept crushing in 2019 with a win of the Triton Poker Super High Roller Series Montenegro HK$750,000 Short Deck – Ante Only event for $1.694 million in May; and crushing the Aria Summer High Rollers with 3 wins and one 3rd place finish for a combined $750k in July.
In March 2020, he won the partypoker MILLIONS Sochi Super High Roller Series $51,000 event for $765,000 right before finishing 3rd in the $250,000 Super High Roller Bowl at the same event for $1.6 million.
→ World Series Of Poker ←
Badziakouski has won 1 WSOP gold bracelet so far. In November 2021, he took down the $50,000 NLHE High Roller event for $1.462 million. He beat the American Ren Lin heads-up for the title at the end.
That year, he also finished 8th in the $100K High Roller for $217,274.
2021 was the first time he cashed in a (usually) summer World Series in Las Vegas. It was quite late in his career, especially given the fact that he wrote in his partypoker blog post that winning the WSOP Main Event has been a dream of his since he was 16.
He has a number of ITM finishes from WSOP Europe events, however, that we mentioned above.
→ Live Cash Games ←
For a long time in his career, Badziakouski almost exclusively played cash games online and tournaments live.
However, with his close affiliation with Triton Poker, he started playing the super high stakes live streamed cash games the company put on.
In April 2019, he played in the Short Deck Hold’em cash game with KRW3 million (around $2,500) antes and a KRW6 million (around $5,000) Button Big Blind in Jeju. At that table, he was up against such elite poker players as Tom “durrrr” Dwan and Timofey “trueteller” Kuznetsov.
In November 2019, he also played a session of €2,000/€4,000/€4,000 NLHE cash game.
→ Online Poker ←
Badziakouski opened up an account on PokerStars as soon as he legally could, at the age of 18 in 2010. He chose the number 2013 in his iconic screen name “fish2013” because that was the year he would turn 21 and could finally play for a WSOP title in America.
He started appearing at the high stakes cash tables in March 2011. According to the online cash game database, he’s up $246K in a sample of 307,000 hands. However, his current results are far from his peak performance – in September 2016, he was over $608K in profit.
Fish2013 mostly played $200/$400 No Limit Hold’em. The biggest pot he’s ever won was $113,279. He hit an Ace-high flush over a lower flush in a hand against a player playing under the screen name “MalACEsia” in April 2014.
On the now defunct poker site Full Tilt, he used the screen name “HelicopterBen82”. However, we don’t have any of his results tracked on that account.
Online, Badziakouski mostly focused on cash games. However, he does have some sporadic big scores in MTT’s as well. For example, in September 2018, he came in second in the $5,200 POWERFEST NLHE Super High Roller for $150,960 on partypoker. He lost the heads-up battle for the title to Czech casino owner Leon Tsoukernik.
In January 2019, it was announced that Badziakouski is joining partypoker Team Pro. Now he’s listed as part of the Player Panel on party’s website.
During the early months of the Coronavirus pandemic, Mikita finished runner-up in yet another big online event. He finished second to Lev Gottlieb in the WSOP Online $10k Short-Deck Championship for $210,249, barely missing his first bracelet.
He did, however, become a WPTWOC Champion by taking down the $25,500 WPT High Roller Championship on partypoker for $1.063 million in September 2020.
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