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PokerStars has set the 25th World Championship of Online Poker for Sept. 6-30 and said the full schedule and event details will be published in the coming weeks. The announcement also comes with a wider set of promotions around the series, including WCOOP Boot Camp and a 20th Anniversary Sunday Million.

PokerStars described the 2026 running as its quarter-century WCOOP.

WCOOP Boot Camp is scheduled for Aug. 2-17. Coverage differed on the scale of the series, with PokerNewsDaily and Hipther putting it at 65 events, while Poker.org described 130 events and more than $6.5 million in guaranteed prizes.

The Boot Camp lineup spans low and high buy-in tiers, with entries from $2.20 to $1,050 and satellites starting at $0.55. PokerStars said the format is meant to mirror the variety of the WCOOP schedule, and the event mix includes No-Limit Hold’em, HORSE, 8-Game, Mystery Bounty and Progressive Knockout tournaments.

The series wraps up on Aug. 16 with two Main Events. The low edition is a $109 No-Limit Hold’em tournament with a $500,000 guarantee, while the high edition carries a $1,050 buy-in and a $300,000 guarantee.

PokerStars is also running a $5 million guaranteed 20th Anniversary Sunday Million. The tournament is a ten-week phased event built around daily $109 Phase 1 heats that run through Sept. 6, with surviving players carrying their stacks into Phase 2, the Finals.

Players can enter as many Phase 1 heats as they want. Special Edition Spin & Go’s start at $0.75 as another route into a $109 Phase 1 heat, and PokerStars said the winner-take-all $109 ticket hits 2,000 times out of 1 million in the $0.75 version.

The $4 Spin & Go version gives a 1.25% chance of landing the same $109 ticket and also offers smaller prizes, including Phase 1 satellite tickets at other buy-in levels. PokerStars said the Sunday Million also includes a Ticket Machine and satellites from $0.55.

PokerStars and BBZ Poker are also running free coaching sessions on the BBZ Discord from July 31 to Aug. 14, with sessions every Friday at 1 p.m. CEST. BBZ founder Jordan “bigbluffzinc” Drummond said the team was excited to partner again, while PokerStars ambassador Ben “Spraggy” Spragg said the sessions are about preparation, reviewing hands and building confidence before WCOOP.

GGPoker signed 100-year-old Ivor Parker ahead of Grosvenor Casinos’ Goliath 2026, and the company used a VIP event on the eve of the festival to mark the partnership. GGPoker said the move made Parker one of the world’s oldest professional athletes.

The festival returns to Coventry for 12 days and is billed as the world’s largest live poker tournament outside Las Vegas. The report also says GGPoker had already welcomed more than 6,000 players to Grosvenor Casino Coventry before the event.

The Grosvenor Casinos page for Goliath lists 25 events across the festival, including the £2 million estimated Main Event with a £160+£40 buy-in through the Poker Live App. It also says tickets won in LIVE EVENT CREDIT satellites can be used in all Goliath tournaments, and that the credit never expires.

GGPoker said the VIP gathering brought together journalists, creators and sporting personalities. The event included a masterclass from new UK and Ireland brand ambassador Leah Hauer, followed by a winner-takes-all showdown with Team GGPoker UK ambassadors and invited guests Mark Labbett and Rory Jennings.

The company framed the signing as a contrast between generations, with Hauer representing the next wave of professional talent and Parker standing for a century of passion for the game. Angela Martin, GGPoker’s head of marketing for UK and Ireland, said poker has always been about much more than cards and that Parker perfectly embodies what the brand loves about the game.

Parker said he started playing poker when he was 14, loved it straight away and never really looked back. He also said poker today is much more strategic than when he began, and that there are many brilliant players, especially at the event.

Goliath runs in Coventry from 23 July to 2 Aug.

Alex Foxen said the WSOP Main Event’s shot clock was long overdue, and he also argued that the better fix for Player of the Year scoring would be to penalize repeated entries rather than require a profitable summer.

In a PokerStrategy Q&A, Foxen said the PoY race was not something he had set out to chase before the series. He went into the WSOP planning to play the schedule he wanted, keep room for days off, and let the summer unfold.

As the title picture became more realistic, he said it nudged him into a couple of tournaments he otherwise might have skipped. He said those days off matter, and that playing every day is not automatically the best way to reach a PoY finish.

Foxen also said WSOP Paradise looks built for him because the schedule is heavily weighted toward high-roller and PLO/no-limit events. He named Shaun Deeb, Naoya Kihara and Josh Arieh as his closest rivals, and said their points have come mostly from mixed games rather than the formats that dominate Paradise.

On the scoring debate, he said a profit requirement is understandable in theory, but it gets messy fast. A player could miss the biggest buy-ins, still win several 10k bracelets, and finish the summer in the red, which is why he preferred a points deduction for extra entries to stop players from “buying the POY.”

He added that a player’s buy-in size does not affect his decision-making at the table. For him, it is all “chips and cards and players,” with stack depth, structure, position and opponent tendencies carrying the real weight.

Foxen also said he is a big fan of shot clocks and that the Main Event change is a long time coming. He compared the idea to the big blind ante, saying people will look back on the old pace as ridiculous once clocks are standard.

The idea itself is not new to tournament poker, with PGT and WPT using action clocks for years. Foxen said it would be absurd not to have one by day five, six or seven, though he did not think it was necessary on day one because of dealer quality and logistical issues.

The Review-Journal reported that the Main Event got its first clock on Day 7, after officials had seen repeated stalling around pay jumps. Players were given 20 seconds to act, six time-bank chips at the start of play, and four more after the second afternoon break, with each time-bank chip worth an extra 30 seconds and Rule 80 letting officials speed up the allotted time at their discretion.

PokerNews reported that the move split opinion. Shaun Deeb said it should have been done earlier, David Williams called it a bad idea, Chris Brewer described it as “completely awful” and “insanely unfair,” while Galen Hall supported it and Andrew Lichtenberger was against it. The same report said Foxen was second in chips in the $25,000 High Roller H.O.R.S.E. with 20 players left, Kihara was fifth and Deeb ninth, and Deeb is trying to defend his crown and become the first player to win WSOP PoY in consecutive seasons and the first to win it three times. The 2026 PoY title will be decided at WSOP Paradise later this year.

Josh Reichard won the $1,110 Major Series of Poker: The Tour Iowa State Poker Championship Main Event for $111,942, beating a field of 549 entries and taking his third MSPT main event title.

PokerNews said the series was at Riverside Casino, just south of Iowa City, for Season 17 Iowa Poker State Championship. The $1,110 buy-in event drew 549 runners and built a $531,030 prize pool in a $300,000 guaranteed tournament.

Reichard carried the chip lead into the final table and added three eliminations on the way to heads-up play. One of those bustouts was his father, Brett “Pops” Reichard, who finished 13th for $6,397 after Josh’s A♣K♣ held against K♠8♣.

Other notables also cashed, including MSPT champions Justin Lynch in 44th and Craig Trost in 36th, plus bracelet winners Rob WazWaz in 31st and John Reading in 24th. Jake Wilding ultimately finished second for $68,763.

The title match ended with Reichard’s A♠9♠ against Wilding’s 9♥9♣. The board ran out J♣10♥6♠4♠K♠, giving Reichard running spades for the nut flush and the trophy.

Reichard said after the win that people like to say how lucky he is, and that he is “the luckiest person in poker.” He also said he loves the MSPT, plays it the most, and wants to see his name at the top of the tour leaderboards.

Card Player also noted his 2024 World Poker Tour Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown main event win for $839,300 and said he had already won three titles earlier in 2026, including his first World Series of Poker gold bracelet. The victory added 1,700 POY points and moved him to third on that points leaderboard. Card Player said the win was worth 840 Card Player POY points, leaving him with 4,724 total and 11th place in the 2026 standings. The win also earned him a seat into the $3,500 MSPT Championship at the Rock ‘N’ Roll Poker Open at Seminole Hard Rock in Hollywood, Florida, which runs Nov. 18-Dec. 2.

Erik Seidel is cutting back on his tournament schedule as the new U.S. gambling tax rule makes high-volume poker grind less workable for him. The longtime pro says he is shifting toward smaller buy-ins and lower-stakes events, even though he still wants to stay visible in some marquee spots.

In April, CNBC reported that Seidel expected to play about a quarter of the tournaments he usually plays in 2026. He also said he planned to avoid virtually all high-roller events costing $25,000 or more, and that he had already been steering clear of $10,000 buy-in tournaments and above.

The change he is reacting to is the One Big Beautiful Bill Act provision that allows gamblers to deduct only 90% of losses instead of 100%, starting in tax year 2026. That means gambling winnings are still treated as income, but losses cannot fully offset them, and the reporting around the law said the rule mainly hits high-roller players while having little effect on casual gamblers.

BNO News later reported that Seidel wants to cut his buy-in exposure sharply and focus on smaller tournaments with smaller entry fees. He still expects to appear in major events such as the WSOP Main Event, but plans to keep a lower profile in less media-heavy tournaments.

Seidel said the math gets too high when he can only deduct 90% of losses, and he warned that the rule could make elite tournament poker too expensive as a way to earn a living. He also said younger players who expect to grind tournaments could suddenly find themselves shut out, and that the rule could tempt some players into doing illegal things with their taxes.

The broader poker world has been sharply critical too. Doug Polk said the change skews the math against high-volume players, Russell Fox warned that the margins may be too thin, and Daniel Negreanu, Scott Seiver and Phil Hellmuth all denounced the provision in harsher terms. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto and Reps. Mark Amodei and Dina Titus have criticized the provision, while the Joint Committee on Taxation estimated the rule would raise about $1.1 billion over eight years.