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Texas Card House is set to launch Season III of the Trailblazer Poker Tour on Aug. 25, with five Texas stops and a Trailblazer of the Year race worth $125,000. PokerNews described the series as a full slate of tournaments, satellites and a Main Event at each stop, while Texas Card House CEO Ryan Crow said the tour started as a bet that Texas players deserved a real tour of their own.

The opener runs Aug. 28-Sept. 8 at the Dallas and Las Colinas clubs and carries $1.2 million in guarantees. Players can earn Trailblazer of the Year points at every stop, and the season prize pool is split into $75,000 for the overall leader plus another $50,000 in $2,000 tournament packages for the top five finishers at each stop.

After the opener, Stop 2 returns to Dallas and Las Colinas from Oct. 8-19. The tour then moves to Spring from Oct. 27-Nov. 9, to Houston from Dec. 26-Jan. 11, and finishes in Austin from Feb. 10-Feb. 22, with the Austin finale paying its share of the top-five distribution in cash.

Texas Card House also has a second WSOP Circuit series lined up at TCH Social in September. The 70-table, membership-based club hosts the 12-day run beginning Sept. 10 and ending Sept. 21, with 18 ring events, a $400 NLH The Lone Star ring event that guarantees $100,000, a $600 Mini Main Event that guarantees $750,000, and a $1,700 No-Limit Hold’em Main Event that starts Sept. 17 with a $2 million guarantee.

That return follows the first-ever WSOP Circuit series in Texas earlier this year, which ran Apr. 23-May 4 and paid out more than $7 million, the most in Texas poker history. PokerTube also noted that the WSOP Circuit moved to a permanent calendar-year format for 2026, and WSOP CEO Ty Stewart said the change gives players more predictability as they plan their chase for gold rings. The second Texas series opens at TCH Social on Sept. 10.

WSOP Super Circuit Canada will debut at Playground in Kahnawake from Aug. 26 to Sept. 12, bringing more than $14 million in guaranteed prize money, 18 championship events and 18 WSOP Circuit Gold Rings. The marquee Main Event carries a $10 million guarantee.

Playground is about 20 minutes south of Montreal, and the stop is being billed as the first Canadian edition of the Super Circuit. The series will bring together professional and amateur players from across Canada and around the world for live tournaments with an international profile.

There is one small mismatch in the public materials. One release says the festival runs through Sept. 12, while GGPoker’s blog post lists Sept. 10. Both sources agree on the Aug. 26 start, and GGPoker says the Main Event itself runs from Sept. 3 to Sept. 11.

GGPoker also said exclusive online qualifiers for the live stop are already underway, with players across Canada able to win seats for the $10 million Main Event. The blog adds an exclusive Meet-Up Game on Sept. 2 for players who qualify through GGPoker, with Daniel Negreanu and Michael Mizrachi among the names they can play against.

As covered in June, PokerNews had already laid out the Montreal schedule and the 18-ring lineup. Its preview said buy-ins will range from $500 regional events to a $25,000 Super High Roller, with formats including No-Limit Hold’em, Progressive Knockouts, Pot-Limit Omaha and Mystery Bounty.

That schedule also includes a $500,000 guaranteed Mini Main Event on Aug. 27, a $2,300 Super Circuit Championship on Aug. 31 and a $1,000,000 guaranteed GGMillion$ High Roller on Sept. 7. PokerNews said the Main Event will have six starting flights across the first weekend of September.

The Montreal-area stop comes with a long local backstory. GGPoker said the World Series of Poker first came to the region in 2013 at Casino de Montreal, moved to Playground in 2015, and returned there in 2024 after a hiatus.

The company also pointed to previous Playground numbers to show the venue’s draw. The 2018 stop drew 8,169 total entries and more than $5 million in prize money, while last August’s Main Event brought in 1,978 entries and a $4,450,500 prize pool, then the largest in WSOP Circuit Main Event history.

PokerStars has published the full schedule for the 25th World Championship of Online Poker, and the series runs from Sept. 6 to 30 with 350 tournaments across 121 events. Buy-ins stretch from $5.50 to $25,000, and every WCOOP winner gets a trophy.

As reported in July, PokerStars had already set the dates and said the full slate would follow in the coming weeks. According to PokerStrategy, the new release confirms 121 events and 350 tournaments in total.

The six flagship main events are split between no-limit hold’em and pot-limit Omaha. The NLH side begins on Sept. 27 at $109, $1,050 and $10,300, with guarantees of $1.25 million, $2 million and $2.5 million. The PLO side starts on Sept. 28 at the same buy-ins, with guarantees of $100,000, $250,000 and $400,000. Together, the six main events carry more than $6.5 million in guaranteed prize money.

Beyond that, PokerStars has set aside 10 World Championship events across different variants and formats. Those include 6-Max, HORSE, Razz, Triple Draw, PLO8, Progressive Knockout, 8-Game and a Women’s Championship.

Qualifying action is already part of the package. Satellites start at $0.55, Spin & Go qualifiers begin at $0.75, and PokerStars says special WCOOP satellite paths are running around the clock. The festival also adds $500,000 in WCOOP Lucky Dip tournament tickets and more than $175,000 in Power Path Express ticket bundles and Main Event entries. Leaderboards across the Low, Medium and High tiers add another $100,000 in prizes.

PokerNews quoted Steve Clarricoats, PokerStars associate director of online scheduling, saying a WCOOP victory is “a piece of poker history” and that every champion joins an exclusive group of players who have conquered one of the toughest online tournament series in the world. He also said the title can be one of the most important of a professional player’s career and a dream result for recreational players. Poker.org added that WCOOP first ran in 2002 and that Main Event first-place prize money has topped $1 million every year since 2007 except last year, when it was $736,000. Pokerology noted that the calendar leaves Sept. 11, 18 and 25 open as rest days between weekends.

Evan Sandberg won the Arizona State Poker Championship at Talking Stick Resort for $627,050, beating Jared Rogers heads-up in the 20th-anniversary edition of the event. The $1,100 tournament drew a record 4,018 entries and ran through four starting flights plus three more days before a champion was crowned.

As reported yesterday, Sandberg entered the final day with the chip lead, and he turned that position into the title. According to PokerNews, the final table returned 10 players, all already guaranteed $25,801 from a record $4,018,000 prize pool. The top two spots were worth a huge jump from there, with the winner set for $627,050 and second place paying $369,937.

The final table thinned quickly. John Phan went out in 10th and Ronnie Bardah in ninth, then Hill Kerby finished eighth, Jonathan Roeder seventh, Moussa Haddad sixth, Sergio Segura fifth and John Riordan fourth. Brandon Conrad picked up steam after taking out Segura and Riordan, and three-handed play began with more than $400,000 separating first and third.

Sandberg had a rough stretch of his own before the finish. He was the shortest stack at one point during four-handed play and got under 10 big blinds, but a split pot with ace-deuce suited against pocket nines helped him recover when the board ran out fours full of tens. He then delivered the knockout blow to Conrad in third, rivering a broadway straight with ace-king against pocket fives.

That left Sandberg with a sizeable edge for heads-up play, and Rogers never found much momentum. He slipped under 10 big blinds before the last hand, then called off with nine-six suited against Sandberg’s jack-eight suited. Sandberg made a full house to finish it, and Rogers took $369,937.

The rest of the final table paid $224,804 for Conrad, $140,214 for Riordan, $91,498 for Segura, $63,495 for Haddad, $47,133 for Roeder, $37,143 for Kerby, $30,566 for Bardah and $25,801 for Phan. Sandberg called the win a huge relief, saying he had often fallen short in big-money spots before and that the score felt like a monkey off his back.

Spadepoker described the result as Sandberg’s first major career-defining title. The Bay Area-born, Vegas-based pro said the victory was the biggest score of his career, and PokerNews noted that his live tournament earnings were above $2.5 million before this win.

Nikita Kalinin won Event #3 of the 2026 WSOP Online at GGPoker, the $2,500 Bounty NLH Championship, for $276,239. PokerNews reported that the score also came with a $30,000 Super Pass for the 2026 WSOP Paradise Super Main Event.

The tournament drew 781 entries and generated a $1,854,875 prize pool. It was Kalinin’s first WSOP bracelet.

His run was already in good shape at the end of Day 1, when only 20 players were left and he bagged the second-largest stack before heading to rest. After firfir exited in sixth place for $75,739, five players remained in contention for the title.

Rinat M finished ninth for $41,670, Luigi Soncin was eighth for $44,689, and Ivan Ilichev took seventh for $50,056. Start-of-day chip leader Arsenii Karmatckii went out fifth for $87,363, Pedro Neves finished fourth for $97,558, and Leandro Bianchini bowed out in third for $120,744 before Kalinin reached heads-up play against Audrius Stakelis.

Both players were already guaranteed at least $127,887, but the final two bounties were worth even more than that. Kalinin won the title and added $148,351 to bring his total to $276,239, while Stakelis settled for $136,074.

The broader 2026 WSOP Online schedule on GGPoker runs from August 16 through September 29 and features 33 bracelet events. Somuchpoker noted that every bracelet winner gets the $30,000 Super Pass package, and the next event on the slate was Event #4, the $1,000 Mystery Bounty Pot-Limit Omaha, set for 7:00 p.m. BST on August 20.