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Alessio La Francesca won his first World Series of Poker bracelet after topping a 1,514-entry field in GGPoker’s $1,500 GGMasters Freezeout Championship. The victory paid about $316,000 and included a $30,000 Super Pass for the 2026 WSOP Paradise Super Main Event.

Day 2 began with 46 players remaining before the field narrowed to nine, according to PokerNews. Austria’s “Jokee90” missed the final table, while Dutch player “Gwn Accepteren,” whose screen name translates as “Just Accept It,” was the first finalist eliminated and collected about $39,500.

Anton Silyavko and Gustavo Pinto followed, earning roughly $51,200 and $66,400 respectively. Artur Berg exited in sixth, then Vinicius “DaddysRun” Escossi finished fifth for about $111,700 and Marty “dadneedsit” Mathis took fourth for about $144,100.

Patrick Brooks, a British grinder based in Mexico, finished third for about $187,900. His departure set up a heads-up match between La Francesca and Finland’s Elias Suhonen, who secured about $243,700 as runner-up.

Suhonen had recently won a €10,200 High Roller at the European Poker Tour Barcelona festival. La Francesca’s breakthrough followed a near miss at the 2025 WSOP Europe in Rozvadoz, where he finished 11th in the €2,000 No-Limit Hold’em Monsterstack, his closest prior finish to winning WSOP gold.

Ben Tollerene won the $50,000 Turbo Bounty Quattro at Triton Super High Roller Series Jeju, defeating Daniel Rezaei heads-up to collect $652,000 and his fifth career Triton title.

The score included $240,000 in bounties, with the remaining $412,000 coming from the tournament payout. Rezaei earned $465,000 as runner-up, while Ding Biao finished third for $241,000.

The late-night turbo drew 35 entries, comprising 28 unique players and seven re-entries, for a $1.75 million prize pool. Nine $60,000 bounties were introduced at the final table, putting roughly one-third of the prize pool into knockout prizes. Only the final six players officially cashed.

Card Player reported that Rezaei led when the final six players were in the money, with Tollerene second in chips. Rezaei had already claimed the first bounty by eliminating Stephen Chidwick, catching a river 10 with pocket tens against Chidwick’s king-four.

Tollerene made his decisive early move at the final table in a three-way pot against Tom Fuchs and Michael Watson. His ace-eight flopped an ace against Fuchs’ king-five and Watson’s pocket fours, eliminating Watson in sixth for $84,000 and Fuchs in fifth for $169,000 while also bringing Tollerene two bounties.

Ding then eliminated Eelis Parssinen in fourth place for $139,000, winning a queen-versus-queen confrontation with a nine kicker against Parssinen’s six. Tollerene subsequently lost 75% of his stack without showdown to Rezaei, but doubled back before Rezaei made a straight to send Ding out in third.

Rezaei began heads-up play with better than a 3:1 chip advantage. Tollerene doubled with a flopped pair of fives holding six-five suited, moved into the lead, and ended the match on the following hand when his ace-king beat Rezaei’s ace-five.

The victory came one night after Tollerene placed third behind Nick Schulman and Matthew Wantman in another $50,000 event. That third-place finish paid $448,000. His two-day earnings therefore passed $1.1 million, after a Jeju stretch in which he had previously cashed twice through the first nine events, including an eighth-place final-table finish.

“I’m having a lot of fun,” Tollerene told Card Player after the win. He said he was motivated to improve despite not being fully satisfied with his play, while Triton quoted him saying he felt good, was sad there was no PLO and wanted to play more.

The win earned Tollerene 408 Card Player Player of the Year points and moved him to 41st in the yearlong standings. Rezaei received 340 points for second place and rose to fifth.

Bernhard Binder carried the chip lead into Day 3 of the $100,000 NLH Main Event at Triton Super High Roller Series Jeju II, with 12 players still chasing a $4.145 million first prize at LES A Casino. Binder bagged 8.33 million chips after Day 2, ahead of defending Triton Main Event champion Danny Tang on 6.03 million.

The tournament finished registration as cards went in the air for Day 2, adding 36 entries to reach 196 and creating a $19.6 million prize pool. PokerNews reported that the final 12 had each secured $320,000, while the top 31 finishers were paid at least $173,000.

Binder’s late surge came in a huge pot against Miroslav Atanasov, who attempted a bluff that handed the Austrian the lead. Binder had already won his first Triton title in Jeju earlier this year, taking down the $125,000 NLH 7-Handed for about $2.14 million.

Tang is attempting to become only the second player, after Mikita Badziakouski, to win consecutive Triton Main Events. Yang Xu sat third with 5.23 million and was seeking his first Triton title. Danilo Velasevic, who started Day 2 as the leader and briefly reclaimed the lead late in the session, ended the night fourth on 5.18 million.

Nick Schulman returned with 4.08 million, while Isaac Haxton bagged 2.58 million. Haxton’s run was his 78th Triton cash and put a 35th final-table appearance within reach. Schulman had also recently finished runner-up in the Jeju $50,000 NLH 7-Handed, according to Poker.org.

The money bubble burst on the first hand of hand-for-hand play when Hannes Jeschka and Samuel Mullur were eliminated simultaneously. They split the $173,000 31st-place payout, receiving $86,500 each. Alex Foxen exited in 17th, Linglin Zeng and Jessica Teusl were the last two women eliminated in 16th and 15th, and Jesse Lonis was the final Day 2 departure in 13th after Tang called his 1.3 million-chip shove.

Day 3 resumed at 75,000/150,000 blinds with a 150,000 big blind ante, leaving 11 eliminations between the remaining field and the title.

Lilac Club Casino will stage its $60,000 Legends of Poker Tournament: One-Day Challenge on Thursday, Sept. 24, with Phil Hellmuth and Shaun Deeb set to headline the field. The event begins at 4 p.m. at the Lilac Club Casino Poker Room in Rochester, New Hampshire.

An announcement published by the Des Moines Register lists Hellmuth, described as a 17-bracelet winner, and Deeb, described as a nine-bracelet winner, as the featured poker champions. Jason White, Mike “The Mouth” Matusow and Brandon Cantu are also scheduled to join the tournament.

The Sept. 24 stop is Lilac Club Casino’s second major poker tournament featuring Hellmuth. He first played at the property last year, and the casino positioned his return as a follow-up to the inaugural event.

Players who knock out either Hellmuth or Deeb will receive a $500 Champions Bounty. Seats may be limited at the discretion of Poker Room management, and the casino directs players to its poker room for complete registration and satellite information.

Interest has already begun through the first satellite on Sept. 13, where several players earned main-event seats. A final Mega Satellite Tournament takes place Sept. 20. Players can also enter through a $600 buy-in available at the Lilac Club Poker Room from 9 a.m. that day.

The tournament will benefit Thriving Roots Childcare and the Seacoast Educational Endowment of Dover. Under New Hampshire’s charitable-gaming model, participating nonprofits receive a designated portion of gaming proceeds generated during their assigned dates.

Thriving Roots Childcare serves children from six weeks to six years old. Funds it receives are earmarked to replace flooring in its pre-K classroom and buy new playground equipment. The Seacoast Educational Endowment of Dover provides grants to Dover public-school educators for continuing education, classroom resources and teaching tools.

“Bringing an event of this caliber to New Hampshire is exciting, but its ability to support organizations serving local children, families, and educators is what makes it especially meaningful,” Granite State Gaming & Hospitality COO Eric Barbaro said. Granite State Gaming & Hospitality, an affiliate of G2 Gaming, oversees Lilac Club Casino and Beach Club Casino in Hampton Beach.

Live tournament rake has risen most noticeably at smaller buy-ins, tightening margins at the lower end, according to a Card Player comparison of events from 2025-26 with comparable tournaments in 2015 and 2019.

The review covered three tournaments at each of four price points: $10,000, $3,000-$5,000, $1,000 and $500. Its central conclusion was not that live tournament rake is climbing at an alarming rate across the board. Rather, small-stakes players are bearing the largest squeeze, while costs at higher buy-ins have remained roughly steady.

That distinction matters for return on investment. The analysis found that higher rake made only a small difference to the bottom lines of top players at their respective stakes, but said a player operating at 10% ROI is significantly affected by an increase of a couple of percentage points. More reentries and later registration have added to the pressure by draining bankrolls faster, it said.

Card Player argued that the gap in rake between a $500 and a $1,000 event can outweigh the relative difference in the strength of their player pools. If the fields are broadly similar, a winning player can post a better ROI in the larger buy-in because the fee is a smaller share of the entry and the player is competing for larger dollar amounts. More of each buy-in also reaches the prize pool.

For bankroll-constrained players, the article suggested selling more action to enter bigger events could be preferable to repeatedly playing high-rake lower-stakes tournaments. It also said players can pressure operators by avoiding events with higher fees, encouraging schedules with lower rake.

The concern around low buy-ins is not new. Red Chip Poker previously argued that many tournaments below roughly $150 have fees high enough to make a positive ROI doubtful even for a strong tournament player. Its example of an approximately $80 daily tournament in smaller Las Vegas rooms put total juice at about $25.

At the highest-profile U.S. series, the picture is more mixed. The WSOP collected about $47.3 million in tournament fees in 2026, almost unchanged from 2025 despite a slight increase in rake across the schedule. Its $10,000 no-limit hold’em world championship drew 9,208 entries. The main event lost entries year-over-year for a second consecutive year even as the full WSOP set a record with about 251,900 entries.

The broader point of the comparison is that the buy-in threshold for a theoretically beatable live tournament is moving upward as operators’ costs rise, putting the greatest strain on players near the bottom of the live tournament ecosystem.