Turkey’s Selahaddin Bedir is the new champion of the Merit Poker NOIR Series Main Event, outlasting a field of 769 entries and grinding through a nearly two hour heads up battle to bank the $525,000 top prize at the Merit Royal Diamond Hotel Casino & Spa in North Cyprus.
The $5,500 buy in tournament drew enough action to build a prize pool of $3,608,148, comfortably supporting a nine handed final table that turned into one of the longer marathons of the summer circuit. Bedir needed roughly twelve hours on the final day alone, with the last table stretching close to ten hours before he could finally raise the trophy.
A Marathon Final Day at Merit Royal Diamond
The Merit Poker NOIR Series has built a reputation for deep fields and dramatic finishes at its home venue in North Cyprus, and this Main Event lived up to that billing. With 769 entries against a $5,500 buy in, the tournament blew past expectations and left a payout structure that rewarded patience as much as aggression.
Play on the final day began with nine survivors and did not let up. Blinds climbed, big stacks traded places more than once, and by the time the field had been trimmed to two players, Bedir and Russia’s Konstantin Voronin, the rest of the room had been playing for the better part of half a day.
The Merit Poker NOIR Series Final Table
The final nine offered a genuinely international lineup, with players from Turkey, Russia, Germany and Austria all cashing for six figures or close to it. Germany’s Fabian Gumz took third for $257,000, while Russia’s Aleksei Gortikov followed in fourth for $181,000. Turkey’s Kenar rounded out the top five for $129,000.
The remainder of the payouts told a similar story of a deep, hard fought bracket. Leonid Orman of Russia banked $100,000 in sixth, Anton Danilov, also of Russia, collected $81,000 in seventh, Austria’s Manuel Fritz earned $66,700 in eighth, and Germany’s Viktor Siegle opened the final table scoring with $57,048 for ninth. Every player who reached the unofficial final table left with a career defining score, but only two would play for the title itself.
Heads Up Duel With Konstantin Voronin
Once the field narrowed to two, Bedir and Voronin traded the chip lead through a heads up battle that ran close to two hours. Voronin twice found double ups that kept his tournament life alive, and for long stretches it looked as though the match could swing either way.
Bedir’s approach was patient rather than reckless. Rather than force the issue with his stack, he picked away at smaller pots to keep pressure on Voronin between the bigger confrontations, then reset and rebuilt his lead each time his opponent doubled through. On the third and final all in of the match, Bedir found himself with the stronger holding and made a wheel straight with A-3 to end the tournament, a reminder of just how quickly a hand can flip a marathon final table. Players still working on reading board textures and straight strength can brush up with a look at our poker hand rankings guide.
Bridge, Business, and a Simple Philosophy
Away from the table, Bedir described poker as sitting somewhere between a business and a hobby for him rather than a pure grind for money. “I like to play poker. I don’t think about money,” he said after the win, a line that captured the relaxed demeanor he carried through a final table that lasted the better part of a full day.
Bedir also credited his background in bridge, the trick taking card game long associated with sharp probabilistic thinking, as part of what shaped his approach to poker. He described bridge as a brain sport that trained skills he now leans on at the poker table, particularly when it comes to reading ranges and staying composed under pressure during long sessions. It is a crossover more common in high level poker than casual players might expect, and one that shows up in how calmly Bedir navigated the swings of a two hour heads up match.
A Statement Result on the NOIR Series Calendar
For the Merit Poker NOIR Series, a $3.6 million Main Event prize pool built from a $5,500 buy in is a strong marker for the series, reinforcing North Cyprus as a regular stop for players chasing deep fields outside the more crowded stretches of the live calendar. With 769 entries, the Main Event drew a mix of regional grinders and international regulars from Germany, Austria and across Eastern Europe, all of whom will have circled the venue for future NOIR Series stops.
For Bedir, the win adds a career high score to his résumé and a title that will follow him into future NOIR Series fields, where he now arrives as the man to beat. For everyone else at that final table, the six and seven figure scores serve as a reminder that patience, more than raw aggression, carried the day at Merit Royal Diamond this time around.
