Vance Martin III turned a short stack into a title run at Borgata, winning the $580 Monster Mirror Mystery Bounty after pulling the event’s biggest bounty and then beating George Grabe heads-up. The Lebanon, Pennsylvania player took home $25,650 for first place and finished with more than $37,000 in bounty cash across a 12-hour final-table grind.

According to PokerNews, the Monster Mirror format paired bounty amounts with payouts, and the $310,000 prize pool was split evenly between the two sides. The event drew 620 entries, and 76 players came back for Day 2.

Martin entered Day 2 with just 12 big blinds, but he kept climbing. He had about $24,000 in prior live tournament earnings, almost all of it from this year, and the strong final-table run led to him doubling his prior tournament winnings.

The early pace on Day 2 was fast, but none of the biggest bounties came off the board right away. Action slowed once the field reached three tables, with Kaifan Wang finishing 16th for $1,375, Todd Lewis 15th for $1,665, and Simon Lau laddering all the way to 11th for $2,015 after leaving at the first break and letting his stack blind out.

The final table began with Shane Brown in the lead and the field split between the top stack group and the short stacks. Martin changed the shape of the table quickly by knocking out Alan Johnson and David Lu in one hand, then collecting the two largest remaining bounties for $27,650 and $6,125.

Brown later finished fifth for $6,125 after a preflop setup where Bernstein’s jacks stayed best. Four-handed play also saw Robert Bernstein’s pocket sevens run into Grabe’s jacks, while Anthony LaRocca bowed out short for $13,275.

Grabe started heads-up with a slight edge, and the two agreed to flatten the payouts, but the duel stayed cautious. Once the stacks got under 40 big blinds, Martin and Grabe traded small pots until the end, when Grabe shoved ace-deuce suited for 18 big blinds and Martin snapped with ace-queen.

Neither player paired the board, so Martin’s ace-queen held and he closed out the title. Grabe finished second for $21,150.

Chris Moorman said his Poker Hall of Fame nomination felt “pretty cool” and argued it was “about time” online poker got more recognition. In a PokerStrategy interview, he said the game he built his career on deserves more respect because many of poker’s best players grew up online.

He said online poker was once seen as a step below live poker, especially when the format was still very new and players could not see their opponents. Now, he said, the games are more interchangeable, and sharpening a game online will often help a player make a successful move into live poker.

Moorman also said online is more important overall for him because it is what he specialized in and prioritized. He added that live success was a huge deal because it was tough at first, and he traced part of his comeback story to a massive bankroll hit, a step back to look at the big picture, and help from his mind coach Stephen Simpson.

He used the interview to make a broader case for European players. Moorman said Europeans sometimes get forgotten, that there are lots of European legends who have not really had a sniff at Hall of Fame induction, and that the Hall is often treated as just the WSOP hall of fame. He also said British pros are not all nits, describing them instead as tight-aggressive players who fight hard when they enter a pot.

Moorman said that if there were an online poker hall of fame, his first-ballot pick would be Niklas Astedt. He called Astedt an inspiration to every online grinder and said a main-event run a few years ago topped off his legacy. Looking ahead, Moorman said he wants to become a more well-rounded player by adding mixed-game prowess to his résumé.

The WSOP said eight finalists were named for the 2026 Poker Hall of Fame on June 24. PokerListings said this was Moorman’s first shot because he did not reach Hall eligibility until the summer of 2025, after voting had closed.

The WSOP said Moorman built his reputation through online tournament success before later winning a World Series of Poker bracelet live. It also laid out the revised process, in which surviving Hall members each get up to four votes and any finalist who clears a two-thirds threshold gets inducted. PokerStrategy said the field was chosen in a public vote before the final decision goes to a panel of living Hall of Famers, after the scoring criteria changed following Michael Mizrachi’s automatic induction last year. The induction announcement is set for the WSOP Main Event final table on ESPN from August 3-5.

BCPoker has rolled out a dedicated desktop client for Windows and Mac, alongside a wider software update that adds new cash-game rewards, a redesigned Spin & Go format, CLUBS, stability fixes, and tournament upgrades. The package is aimed at faster play, cleaner multi-tabling, and less friction than browser-based sessions.

According to PokerStrategy, the desktop release is built specifically for real-money poker and is meant to remove many of the limits of browser play. The client supports up to four tables at once across cash games, tournaments, and freerolls, and its Auto-Tile feature automatically arranges every table on the screen.

PokerListings also reported that the standalone client is now available for Windows and macOS, quoting BCPoker on “faster performance and improved stability” and on cutting out the need to rely on a browser and unnecessary lag during play. The cross-platform setup also lets players multi-table on desktop before switching to the mobile app when they are away from the computer.

The software push goes beyond the new client. BCPoker says it has spent the past month stepping up its cash-game offer with faster software, up to 50% rakeback, and lower rake caps across several key formats, with selected caps cut by as much as 70%. The result is lower playing costs and more money left in the bankroll.

The update also adds BC Fair and BC Flair to NLHE cash games. BC Fair automatically awards Casino Free Spins after qualifying losses, while BC Flair can trigger instant Free Spins after qualifying winning moments, with both systems fully automatic and requiring no registration or opt-in. Any Free Spins are credited instantly, and higher stakes can unlock bigger surprise rewards.

Mario Boos has become the last French player standing at the 2026 WSOP Main Event final table, and he has already locked up $1 million for making it this far. The WSOP lists him with 44 million chips, or 29 big blinds, as the final nine prepare to play for the $10 million top prize and the bracelet.

PokerOrg said Boos has been flooded with support from the French community, with thousands of messages coming in, and he also has 10 people staying with him in a Las Vegas house, with 10 more on the way.

Boos described the moment as a dream most poker players would want. He told Craig Tapscott that everybody texted him and said he is living the dream of every poker player who wants to be there and play this final table.

He also said he can picture himself as a teenager watching the Main Event final table on TV, when his only goal was to play poker. He said he will probably realize the importance after the tournament.

This is also his first time playing the Main Event in Las Vegas. PokerOrg described the early stretch as an intense ride, starting with a tough Day 1 table that left him around 27,000 chips down from a 60,000 starting stack before he climbed to about 165,000 on Day 2.

Boos said his first table was probably the hardest he had faced in the first six days, even though many players had urged him to take Day 1D because it was supposed to be the softest opening flight. He also said that once the field got deeper, there were no more easy tables.

The event has also forced him out of his normal routine. Boos said the Main Event is eight days completely away from real life, that he had to break his daily gym habit because there was not enough time, and that the break before the ESPN return gives him a chance to reset and get his mind right.

PokerNews added the decisive hand that helped push him into the final table picture. On Day 8, Boos faced Han Feng, thought about folding pocket tens, then chose to play for the win instead of taking the $250,000 pay jump between tenth and ninth; his tens held against ace-king.

Boos entered the tournament with about $240,000 in Hendon Mob earnings, had never cashed the Main Event before 2026, and had only about half a dozen WSOP cashes overall. Most of his results came from smaller events in France, and his previous best score was about $54,700 before this run blew past it.

Boos said he plans to sleep, go to the gym and study the table before returning. The first day of the final table airs live on ESPN on Monday, Aug. 3 at 9 p.m. EST.

RunGood Poker Series is set for another stop at Palace Poker this month, with the RGPS Golden Expedition scheduled for Aug. 13-23. PokerNews described the trip as a return to Dallas, Texas, while RunGood’s own schedule lists Palace Poker in Grand Prairie and says club membership is required to play.

The festival has 16 ring events on the calendar. Opening day starts with the $200 RunGood Texas 20K ring event, which carries a $10,000 guarantee, and wraps with Flight A of the $300 PokerNews PowerStack Mystery Bounty, a tournament that promises at least $100,000 in the pot.

There are six Day 1 flights in the Golden Expedition, with Day 2 set for Aug. 16 for players who bag a stack. The middle of the series also includes a $250 Seniors 50+ event and a $400 Pot-Limit Omaha tournament on Aug. 17, plus a $400 T.O.R.S.E. event on Aug. 19.

The Main Event is a $600 buy-in no-limit hold’em tournament with a $200,000 guarantee. Day 1a begins Aug. 20 at 11 a.m., Flight B follows at 5 p.m. the same day, and the remaining starting flights run after that before the event is played down to a winner on Aug. 23.

The final day also features a $200 Closer NLH and a $130 Last Chance NLH. PokerNews says it will provide live reporting on the Main Event from start to finish.

Palace Poker already hosted an RGPS series in March, when the tour returned to Texas for another 16-ring stop. That run featured a $200 opener, a $360 PokerNews PowerStack with a $100,000 guarantee, and a $1,200 Main Event with a $500,000 guarantee.

Ireland’s Gambling Regulatory Authority has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Nevada Gaming Control Board to cooperate on gambling-regulatory matters. GRAI expects it to be the first step toward broader cooperation with U.S. regulators, as Ireland continues building out oversight of its online and remote betting market.

The agreement is meant to help the two agencies oversee cross-border wagering and online gaming activity. The document says it is a statement of intent, not a legally binding contract, and that no personal data, third-party information or commercially sensitive information will be shared at this stage.

Any future sharing of that kind would need a separate information-sharing agreement. The MoU also says the regulators can communicate regularly on issues with major implications for the other side, will review the arrangement every two years, and can end it with 30 days’ written notice.

The deal sits inside a bigger reset of Ireland’s gambling rulebook. GRAI was established in March 2025 under the Gambling Regulation Act 2024, and the MoU says its functions include licensing, supervising and controlling gambling activities in Ireland, maintaining a register of licence holders and a National Gambling Exclusion Register, and entering information-sharing arrangements with similar bodies outside the State.

Ireland has already started putting that framework into action. Earlier reporting said GRAI began accepting online gaming licence applications in February, and that any operator providing remote gaming services in Ireland must be licensed since 1 January 2026. GamingAmerica also reported that, after a commencement order activated key parts of the Act, GRAI can issue licences, impose fines and order illegal operators to stop.

The Nevada side brings a long-running regulatory model. The MoU says the Nevada board was created by the state legislature in 1955 to protect the stability and integrity of the gaming industry, keep gaming honest and competitive, and oversee reporting and collection of gaming taxes and fees.

GRAI chief executive Anne Marie Caulfield said Nevada’s knowledge and expertise are very valuable and welcomed its insight, guidance and experience, with consumer protection and public health and safety at the centre of operations. Mike Dreitzer said the board was pleased to sign the MOU and looked forward to sharing best practices and advancing collaboration.

WPT Global is putting a ¥9 Mystery Bounty event on the schedule for Saturday, Aug. 1 at 01:00 pm UTC, with a ¥1,000,000 guaranteed prize pool. The Special Edition Mystery Bounty is open to all WPT Global players.

According to pokerfuse, the event is capped at 30,000 entries, which creates a built-in ¥760,000 overlay. At that cap, the most the field can contribute is ¥240,000, or ¥8 per entry, so the operator has to make up at least ¥760,000 to hit the guarantee.

The event also carries a ¥200,000 first-place prize and a ¥200,000 top Mystery Bounty. The tiny buy-in makes it a shot at a very large return, with the top bounty and the winner’s prize both set at roughly $30,000.

The Special Edition Mystery Bounty is being presented as part of the ongoing ¥200,000,000 guaranteed WPT Asia Series Overdrive festival. The series kicked off on July 19, with events running every day until Aug. 30 and special WPT Ring events on weekends.

The Asia-series branding has already been used for a broader run of online festival events. WPT Global said the WPT Asia Series launched as a new online festival built around Asia-friendly time zones and Ring championship events, running from Feb. 15 to March 15 with more than 100 events and ¥100,000,000 in combined guarantees.

That earlier series also included weekly Mystery Bounty Main Events under the WPT Myster¥ Millions banner. In March, WPT Asia Mystery Millions was running as a weekly flagship at a ¥188 buy-in with a ¥2,000,000 guarantee, using repeated Day 1 flights and a Saturday Day 2 finale.

WPT Global’s own blog described WPT Asia MYSTER¥ Millions as a recurring, phase-based Mystery Bounty format, with players able to take multiple shots across the week and carry qualifying stacks forward into Day 2.

Carlos Chadha won the Borgata Summer Poker Open $2,700 Championship title, beating Maxwell Young heads-up for $242,385. The seven-handed finish came from a 565-player field and lasted just over three hours.

According to PokerNews, Chadha entered the final table with 9.52 million chips, more than 40% of the chips in play and nearly three times Young’s 3.45 million. Michael Renna started with 2.795 million, Nicholas Verderamo with 2.63 million, James Tedrow with 1.955 million, Russ Dunlevy with 1.055 million and Andrew Porter with 1.03 million. The seven finalists were already locked into at least $34,620 each from the tournament’s $1.356 million prize pool.

The final table started on Level 28 with blinds of 60,000/120,000 and a 120,000 big blind ante. Levels were set at 60 minutes and then dropped to 30 minutes once play got heads-up, and the updates were matched to a final-table stream on BetMGM’s official YouTube channel on a 30-minute delay.

Andrew Porter was the first player out after Young flopped a pair of eights and Porter missed his straight draw. Chadha then flopped top two pair to beat Russ Dunlevy and send him out in sixth place.

Young later grabbed the chip lead for the first time when he flopped two pair against Chadha’s top pair of kings. He widened that edge by rivering a straight to bust Tedrow in fourth.

Verderamo briefly pulled close after doubling twice on consecutive hands, but he shoved for the third straight hand and ran into Chadha’s kings, finishing third. That left Chadha and Young heads-up with Chadha ahead 15,525,000 to 7,000,000 after only eight hands.

The final hand came after Young limped on the button and Chadha raised to 675,000. Young called, bet 600,000 on the 5-high flop, and then fired 1.1 million on the turn before the river brought an eight. Young shoved 2,450,000, Chadha called with 8-4 for rivered two pair, and Young mucked fives and threes.

Young told his rail, “I got screwed on the river.” Chadha said the win felt like a culmination of four years of hard tournament work and 16 months of cash-game work, and that thousands of hours of studying had finally paid off. He also said he had come to Atlantic City after finishing 51st out of 9,200 in the WSOP Main Event, which he called his last bullet, and that he played one bullet in this event and won it.

The $7,500 High Roller is scheduled to kick off at the Merit Royal Diamond Hotel Casino & Spa in Northern Cyprus, bringing a $1,000,000 guarantee to the biggest buy-in event on the 2026 NOIR Poker Series schedule. Players start with 100,000 chips and play 40-minute levels.

It is described as the largest buy-in event of the festival. The event is set to run over three days, with the opening flight playing through eight levels before players bag for the night.

Late registration stays open until the end of Level 12 on Day 2, and unlimited reentries are available during that period.

For a recent benchmark, PokerNews pointed to Cedric Schwaederle’s win in the $5,300 Merit Poker Dolce Vita Series High Roller 12 months earlier. That event used the same structure and format, drew 318 entries, and paid Schwaederle $310,000 for the title.

WPT Global is already running Battle of Malta Autumn Edition satellites that start at $1.10 and funnel into a weekly $110 qualifier, giving players a low-cost route into the October festival’s €600 Main Event and its €1.5 million guarantee.

The ladder begins with $1.10 and $11 steps. Those feeders feed the Sunday $110 package event, which guarantees two $1,600 packages every week, so players can climb all the way from a tiny buy-in to a live Malta trip.

Package winners can also choose a €160 cash allowance instead of the breakfast add-on for themselves and a guest during the stay. The accommodation tied to the package runs from October 29 to November 2.

The full Autumn Edition schedule is still being pieced together, and some events have already been posted on the tour’s Instagram page. The finished lineup is expected to add 30 side events.

The Main Event itself will offer €300 and €600 flights. The €300 flights play down to 7.5% of the field before the money starts, while the €600 flights play down to 15%.

The Autumn Edition has a big recent benchmark to chase. In 2025, the event drew 6,039 buy-ins and re-entries, built a €2,728,270 prize pool, and paid 811 places. Each of the eight finalists locked up at least €28,000, and Candido Cappiello won the title after a heads-up deal for €225,770.

Coverage on the calendar has not been perfectly aligned. A separate PokerListings preview put the festival back at Casino Malta in St. Julian’s from October 28 to November 5, and said there would be more than €2 million in guarantees over the nine-day run, including a €1.5 million Main Event guarantee.

The 20th annual Arizona State Poker Championship opens Aug. 13 at Talking Stick Resort in Scottsdale. The No-Limit Hold’Em event carries a $1,100 buy-in and a $3 million guaranteed prize pool.

According to PokerNews, the tournament runs through Aug. 19, and the outlet plans exclusive live reporting on site from the start until a winner is crowned, along with digital and social media coverage.

Day 1a begins at 10:15 a.m. local time on Aug. 13. Additional opening flights run once per day for the following three days, then Day 2 is set for Aug. 17, Day 3 for Aug. 18, and the final table for Aug. 19.

Players start with 20,000 chips and can add on another 20,000 for $30. The add-on money goes to tournament staff.

There are already some $140 Milestone Satellites running inside Talking Stick Resort, and more opportunities to get into the championship will be available in August leading up to the event.

Brandon Mitchell is the defending champion after winning last summer’s event for $525,700 and outlasting a field of 3,546 runners. He beat David Levy heads-up, and the title was sealed when middle pair held up against king-high on the flop.

Carl Carodenuto won the tournament in 2024 for $313,078, and it remains the biggest win of his career.

Pokerfuse reported that only live WSOP Circuit winners will get a WSOP Paradise package, and that the rule does not apply to online winners. The outlet described the live-only eligibility as a departure from previous years and said the change seemed to have passed players by.

In a WSOP news post, the company said every live and online WSOP Circuit ring winner through Dec. 2, 2025 received free entry to the WSOP Circuit Championship Mystery Bounty and a $5,000 package to cover the stay in the Bahamas.

WSOP Paradise is the Bahamas-based extension of the main World Series of Poker festival, and all Paradise winners earn bracelets. Pokerfuse’s Paradise guide says the 2026 series runs from Dec. 3 to 17 at Baha Mar, making it the fourth edition after the event debuted in 2023 and has returned each December since.

The same guide says the 2026 stop is expected to lean more toward higher buy-ins and high rollers, with the full schedule still to come. It also says the 2025 Paradise schedule had 15 bracelet-awarding events and that 2026 is likely to match or exceed that number.

Pokerfuse says the 2025 WSOP Paradise Main Event drew 2,891 entries and produced a $72.2 million prize pool, while the Super Main Event carried a $25,000 buy-in and a $60 million guarantee.

At the time of the guide, there were no satellites running specifically for the 2026 series yet. International players could qualify through GGPoker, US players through WSOP Online satellites, and players in Ontario through GGPoker Ontario.

WSOP reversed course and said the 2026 Main Event final table will be played without a shot clock. The final nine will return to Horseshoe Las Vegas on Aug. 3-5 to play down to a winner, with the final table taking place in the Paris Ballroom.

The clock had only just been added on Day 6 after Loren Klein spent more than 15 minutes in the tank while trying to chase a pay jump. That was the first time the Main Event had ever used a shot clock in its 57-year history.

In a statement on its official X account, WSOP said the change came after discussions with players and tournament staff. The same rules still let any player call for the clock if an opponent is taking an unreasonable amount of time, and staff keep that authority as well, though WSOP said it should be used only in exceptional situations.

WSOP also left itself room to put the clock back in if repeated or excessive stalling starts to hurt the pace of play. When the system was in place, players had 20 seconds to act, with a 30-second extension and time-bank chips, and the setup gave players six time banks at the start plus four more after the second afternoon break.

The early reaction was mostly positive. Barny Boatman called it "a very good decision," and Adam Hendrix also backed the move, while Harry Gandia and some other commenters said the timing looked like the rules were being changed midstream.

The shot clock had been used through Days 7 and 8 while the field shrank to the final table, but it will not be part of the live finish. The final three days are set for Aug. 3-5 on ESPN and Warner Bros. Discovery partners.

Chris Moneymaker has explained the river call that ended his run on the 2026 WSOP Main Event money bubble. He said the decision was driven by the range he put Antonio Vargas on, not by J-9 offsuit standing alone.

According to Card Player, Moneymaker said he had watched Vargas closely at the table and believed the same action would have meant something very different from a tighter player. He said, “He may be the only player I make that call against,” and added that he still had enough chips to play with about 27.6 big blinds.

At the time, the Main Event had drawn 9,208 entries and Day 4 began with 1,389 players. The top 1,382 would be paid, so the field was seven eliminations away from the $15,000 minimum cash when play resumed with blinds at 4,000-8,000 and an 8,000 big-blind ante.

Moneymaker opened to 17,000 from the hijack with J♥9♦, then called Vargas’s three-bet to 42,000. Vargas had A♥A♠. On the flop, 8♥7♠7♦, Vargas bet 20,000 into an estimated 96,000-pot and Moneymaker continued with a gutshot and two overcards.

Vargas kept barreling with 45,000 on the 7♣ turn, and Moneymaker called again. The 8♠ river made a full house on the board, and Moneymaker said the key point was that many possible bluffs did not improve either. He said he was not calling because he thought J-9 beat aces, but because enough of Vargas’s range played the board.

Vargas tabled the aces and Moneymaker was eliminated. Stoyan Madanzhiev and Zhaken Seitbekov were also knocked out in the same hand-for-hand sequence, and because only two $15,000 minimum-cash spots were available, the $30,000 was split three ways for $10,000 each. The three then flipped for a $25,000 WSOP Paradise package, which Seitbekov won.

PokerStars’ WCOOP Boot Camp is back for August 2-17, and the latest reporting puts the warm-up at 65 events with $6.5 million in guarantees. The series is being framed as the lead-in to WCOOP’s 25th edition, which is scheduled for September 6-30.

The schedule lines up around a two-tier structure. The events come in low and high buy-in versions, with entries from $2.20 to $1,050 and online satellites starting at $0.55.

The schedule mixes hold’em, PLO, PLO8, H.O.R.S.E., 8-Game, Razz, Badugi and 2-7 draw formats across full-ring, six-max, seven-max and heads-up tables. It also includes progressive knockouts, mystery bounties and marathon events.

BBZ Poker says it is supplying the training for the second straight year. The partner is running three full coaching days on July 31, August 7 and August 14, with four 50-minute seminars each day, free on BBZ Discord and open without a subscription.

The coaching roster includes Jordan “bigbluffzinc” Drummond, Jargo Alaväli, Andy “Bowie” Wilson, Brian “bfizz” Fite, Adam Calder, Rodrigo Maseda Erlin, Ryan “newguy89” McEathron and Giuseppe “JOJEPE” Calio. Each training day ends with a $0.01 password-protected tournament on PokerStars that awards up to $1,500 in WCOOP tickets, and BBZ says the password is dropped during the seminars so attendees can enter.

The tournament side starts with a pair of Series Opener events on August 2, one at $11 with a $40,000 guarantee and one at $109 with a $75,000 guarantee. It then builds toward two Main Events on August 16, a $109 version with a $500,000 guarantee and a $1,050 version with a $300,000 prize pool.

Jamie Shaevel goes into the WSOP Main Event final table with 56 million chips, third among the final nine, and at least $1 million already locked up. The Santa Monica regular also still has a shot at the $10 million first prize when play resumes Aug. 3.

Card Player described the 39-year-old as a cash-game grinder who has played the Main Event 18 times. His best result before this year was 100th place in 2011 for $54,851, and his prior tournament cashes totaled just over $402,000.

Shaevel has been open about how unusual the run is for him. He told PokerNews that the Main Event is basically the only tournament he plays all year, and that the slower, deeper structure fits his cash-game background better than most events.

His path to the final table took a few key swings on Days 6 through 8. On Day 6, he first made a nut flush to beat Christopher Chaudey’s flopped set of fours, then later knocked out Chaudey with aces against jacks. He ended the night just outside the top 10 with 62 players left.

Day 7 began rough, but Shaevel got back on track with pocket aces against Rami Hammoud’s pocket kings, a pot that pushed him back into eight-figure territory. He started Day 8 near the bottom of the remaining 21 players, then doubled through Evagoras Evagorou when a river bluff ran into sevens full of tens, before finishing off Tolga Karakaya in 11th place with jacks against ace-ten.

Lucas Jumalon took the final-table chip lead with 194 million, Hammoud had 79 million, and Shaevel sat third. The final table is set for Aug. 3 at 9 p.m. ET on ESPN2, moves to ESPN on Aug. 4, and the finale airs Aug. 5 at 10:30 p.m. ET on ESPN.

Carlos Chadha ended Day 3 of the 2026 Borgata Summer Poker Open $2,700 Championship with a huge cushion, bagging 9,520,000 chips in Atlantic City and putting himself far ahead of the final seven. The clock had already slipped past 2 a.m. local time when play stopped, and Chadha was nearly three times the size of his closest challenger.

PokerNews said Chadha’s surge came from a key stretch against Nicholas Verderamo. In one bluff, Chadha fired 2,400,000 on the river with just a pair of threes and got Verderamo to fold top pair, aces. Soon after, Chadha made the nut flush on the river to beat Bin Weng’s set of fours, and Weng went out in 11th place.

Chadha also arrived with a bit of recent big-stage momentum. A few weeks earlier, he had made a deep run in the WSOP Main Event, finishing 51st.

Maxwell Young sits second with 3,450,000 on the final-day lineup. Michael Renna has 2,795,000 for third, Nicholas Verderamo has 2,630,000, James Tedrow has 1,955,000, Russ Dunlevy has 1,055,000 and Andrew Porter has 1,030,000.

He nearly lost his seat when he ran into Verderamo’s jacks, but the flop gave him a set and kept him alive. He then doubled up multiple times during the last level and went from an extreme short stack to third on the leaderboard.

Tedrow is the last remaining BetMGM qualifier left in the field, while Porter is a WSOP bracelet winner. The final seven have already locked up $34,620 each, with the champion set to take $242,385 plus the Borgata and BetMGM trophies.

The event drew 565 entries and built a $1,356,000 prize pool that paid the top 71 finishers. Day 3 began with 24 players left, after 551 entries across the three starting flights and 14 late registrants pushed the total field to 565.

Day 2 had ended with Ricky Guan in the lead on 2,145,000, just ahead of Verderamo on 2,035,000, with Concetta Rinaldi and Bin Weng close behind.

The 2026 Goliath in Coventry has already passed 12,000 entries and is heading for another record, with more than 12,600 entries even if nobody else enters or re-enters. That would leave the £200 event only about 300 short of last year’s 12,961 turnout.

Earlier PokerNews coverage said the festival runs from July 23 to August 2 in Coventry and that Grosvenor expected about a £2 million prize pool for the Main Event. It also said the Goliath has grown every year since 2011 except during the 2020 and 2021 COVID years, when it moved online.

Day 1f drew 2,227 entries, the second-most of any Goliath flight since the event started in 2011, and only 137 players advanced to Day 2. Farzin Sobhanpanah finished with 2,100,000 chips, giving him the flight lead, the overall chip lead, and the biggest Day 1 stack in event history.

Day 1g followed later that evening with 928 entries and 91 Day 2 survivors. John Bousfield bagged the chip lead there with 900,000 chips, while the final non-turbo Day 1h already had 1,150 entries at the time of writing and more than 350 players on the alternate list.

Ontario’s regulated online gambling market generated C$400.6 million in gross revenue in June, according to iGaming Ontario figures cited by Gaming News Canada. That was down 3% from May’s C$413.1 million, but up 30.5% from C$306.8 million a year earlier.

June was the sixth month to clear C$400 million, and all six of those months came in the last eight months. May had already been described as the second-best month on record.

Online casinos remained the biggest piece of the market at C$316.8 million in June. That was 3% lower than May’s all-time record of C$326.5 million.

Sports betting brought in C$78.6 million, also down 3% from C$81.3 million in May. Casino.org said the 2026 FIFA World Cup gave Ontario’s regulated online gaming market a major boost in June, even though the revenue line still moved lower month over month.

On the handle side, Ontario sports betting cash wagers passed C$1 billion again, reaching C$1.033 billion in June, up 6% from May and the eighth month in the past 12 to clear that mark. Overall iGaming cash wagers reached C$9.458 billion, flat month over month, while the province had 1.319 million active player accounts, up 5%.

Online poker stayed the smallest vertical, with June revenue of C$5.2 million, down 4% from C$5.4 million in May. Since launch, and excluding OLG numbers, Ontario’s online gambling market has generated more than C$12.6 billion in revenue, with casinos accounting for about 75%, sports betting 22%, and poker 2%. Taxes since launch have now passed about C$2.52 billion, roughly 20% of revenue.

The WSOP Circuit Tallinn €1,500 Main Event set a new attendance high by reaching 977 entries, and the prize pool climbed to €1,253,002. That cleared the previous record of 888 entries and gave the stop its biggest payout pool yet.

According to PokerNews, Day 1d added 392 entries to the overall tally, then Day 1e brought in another 191 buy-ins.

Rasmus Lundström finished Day 1d with 1,304,000 chips after starting with 50,000. Mathias Siljander sat second on 948,000, and Roy van der Reijnst was third with 912,000.

The Day 1d field sent 58 players through to Day 2, all of them already in the money. The update did not yet lock in the blind level for the restart because Day 1e was still in progress, but Day 2 was set to run 60-minute levels and play down to the final 24 players.

The Main Event is part of a Tallinn stop that opened on July 23 and runs through August 2 at the Olympic Park Casino. The festival schedule includes 12 WSOP Circuit ring events and more than 60 side events, and the €1,500 Main Event itself uses five flights from July 28-30.

The format allows players to enter as many flights as they want, although only their largest qualifying stack carries forward if they bag more than once. The setup was built on earlier flights, including Day 1b’s 224 entries and the 34 players who bagged from that flight.

The record comes against last year’s Tallinn Main Event, which reached 888 entries and produced a €1,138,860 prize pool split among the top 138 finishers. Jenny Westerlund won that edition, beating Krzysztof Chmielowski heads-up for €200,200.

Octopi Poker ran a WSOP Main Event final-table simulation in a training video featuring Matt Hunt, and it also opened Octopi Professional to anyone for 24 hours. The free window started at 7am PT on Thursday, July 30, and the livestream began at 10am PT on the Octopi Poker YouTube channel, according to Poker.org. Octopi Professional normally costs $65 a month or $600 a year.

The preview leaned on Octopi’s The Vault, which lets users plug in seat draws and stack sizes and then study situations that often come up in tournament play. Hunt used the actual seat draw and stack sizes for all nine returning players.

PokerNews reported that the 2026 WSOP Main Event final table was set. Lucas Jumalon finished Day 8 with 194 million chips, far ahead of Rami Hammoud on 79 million and Jamie Shaevel on 56 million.

Jumalon entered the day with 40.8 million, then built a huge stack after cracking Malcolm Trayner’s queens with J♥ J♣ and making a river full house for a pot worth more than 50 million chips. He later eliminated Trayner in 10th place to lock in the final table.

The final nine were guaranteed at least $1 million each, with $10 million and the bracelet waiting for the champion. Play is due to resume on August 3 with 56:40 left in Level 39 at blinds of 1 million/1.5 million and a 1.5 million big blind ante.

PokerStars Exclusively on FanDuel has upgraded its daily Nightly Stars tournament, doubling the starting stack from 5,000 chips to 10,000 and pushing late registration back to the 400/800 blind level. The move also lifts the Tuesday and Thursday guarantees to $25,000, while the tournament carries a $22,500 guarantee on the other days.

PokerFuse reported that the changes went live on July 27. It described Nightly Stars as the backbone of the operator’s daily multi-table tournament schedule, and said the update was aimed at improving existing events rather than adding new ones.

PokerNews said Nightly Stars starts at 6:40 p.m. and has been a popular event since it began in April. The outlet said the bigger stack should appeal to players who prefer deeper-stacked poker and give them a little more time to register and rebuy.

Reception to the changes has been positive so far, according to PokerNews. That lines up with the broader pitch around the event, which the outlet described as offering players good value.

FanDuel launched PokerStars Exclusively on FanDuel on April 1. FanDuel said the platform is available in Michigan, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, and that it merges player liquidity across those markets.

FanDuel also said the combined network gives customers access to bigger games, larger prize pools, and a broader selection of tournaments and cash games. In the launch note, general manager Aaron Dugan said the partnership brings together two major names in gaming and gives players a more dynamic experience.

Han Feng will take a 25,000,000-chip stack into the WSOP Main Event final table, with at least $1 million already locked up after outlasting a field of 9,208 entries. He is one of nine players left, and the chip lead is a long way ahead of him, but his run is already the biggest moment of his poker life.

The personal side of the story is just as unusual. In a Poker.org profile, Feng said he did not tell his father he played poker until February this year because his parents had a very negative view of gambling. He said that view likely came from seeing friends lose a lot of money.

Now his father is watching every clip he can find. Feng said he has been glued to the free French stream, even though he does not really know what is happening, because he can see his son on TV.

Feng’s path to this spot was slow and careful. He said he finished a business degree before taking poker seriously, and even hauled a textbook to the poker room so he could read assigned work while playing cash games. He said his timeline started in 2019, when he was 20, but he was not old enough to play in the casino before COVID hit.

When the world opened back up, he started at $1/$3 and then moved to $2/$5 before scaling into tournaments. The profile described him as “the nittiest guy ever,” with a heavy focus on bankroll management, and said he had only two small WSOP cashes before this run, plus a few minor results around town.

PokerNews reported that Feng was the shortest stack left when he came back from the extended dinner break, but he then doubled through Lucas Jumalon when his king-high beat jack-high to lock up the final-table seat. Feng said he had been sitting on the break and basically accepting, “if I die, I die,” and added that it was the first time he had been all in for his tournament life in the event.

His path through the late stages was up and down. PokerNews said he was 24th of 533 players remaining by the end of Day 4, reached eight-figure stacks on Day 6, and also took some hits, including pocket nines getting cracked and a river ace beating his sixes. He eliminated Sean Winter on Day 6 and David Kluchman on Day 7, then briefly held the table chip lead before his stack slid under 10 big blinds.

Feng said he doubled his stack every day from Day 5 through Day 8 and kept himself from blowing up while others lost their minds slowly. He said he has “a lot of gym, a lot of study” planned for final-table prep and called it “locking in, like a boot camp,” but the final-table run has already changed the rest of his year, which he said had been heading toward a one-way trip to Europe after the WSOP.

WSOP.com said the final table returns on August 3 for a three-day finish, with ESPN2 carrying live coverage from 9:00 p.m. to midnight ET and edited programs premiering on August 10. The official site also said live Main Event streams will be available on WSOP’s YouTube in limited international markets where ESPN and Eurosport are not available.

The $3,500 Merit Poker Cup hit the stone bubble with 64 players left, and Vyacheslav Kardash ended the penultimate day with 2,090,000 chips.

According to PokerNews, the action was at the Merit Royal Diamond Hotel Casino & Spa in Northern Cyprus. The day began with 129 players from three opening flights, and another 125 entries came in before late registration closed five levels into the day, bringing the field to 428.

That field built a $1,260,032 prize pool, comfortably above the $1 million guarantee. Only 63 players will cash.

Ali Al-Kubasi sat second on 2,050,000 and Stefan-Sebastian Ionita was third on 2,035,000. Kardash was one of only three players to clear 2 million, with Ohad Geiger next on 1,555,000, then Dmitry Gromov on 960,000 and Adrian State on 950,000.

The rest of the top ten included Xiaosheng Zheng on 605,000, Simone Andrian on 575,000 and Felipe Ketzer on 465,000. Shyngis Satubayev busted despite making a royal flush earlier in the day, Joris Ruijs and start-of-day leader Hassan Nashar also fell, and Damir Zhugralin was sent out when a Q♦ river counterfeited his two pair in a hand where Ali Al-Kubasi held A♥ K♣.

The 64 returnees restart on Friday, July 31 at noon local time on Level 22 with blinds of 10,000/20,000 and a 20,000 big blind ante. The winner will take $240,000 and the tournament trophy.

Flight C of SHRPO Event 2’s $400 Deep Stack No-Limit Hold’em closed registration at 455 entries. That lifted the combined field to 1,249 and pushed the prize pool to more than $400,000 against the event’s $1 million guarantee.

The Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open site said the flight had been at 440 entries before the cutoff at 2:30 pm. Earlier in the day, it was at 190 entries, and the organizer said the early pace had all but locked up the guarantee.

The site had already pointed to 794 entries on Wednesday as the pace for crushing the $1 million mark. It also said the third flight started with 72 players, expected more as people made their way to the Grand Ballroom, and noted that five huge flights were still to come.

Flight C will continue until 57 players remain. Players must bag chips to cash in SHRPO Event 2.

Those 57 survivors will move on to Day 2 on Sunday at 1 pm.

Greg Mueller will start the WSOP Main Event final table fourth in chips, with 48.5 million. He has already locked up at least $1 million in the $10,000 no-limit hold’em world championship in Las Vegas, and that is more than twice his previous biggest tournament cash.

At 55, Mueller is a Canadian former hockey player and a three-time WSOP bracelet winner. PokerNews described him as the most experienced player left in the field, while Card Player called him the most recognizable name among the final nine.

His run began on Day 1D after he was still on the fence about entering, according to Card Player. A conversation with longtime friend Shawn Buchanan pushed him to play, and Mueller said Buchanan is “the best no-limit tournament player in the world.”

The stack kept climbing from there. He ended Day 1D with 100,000 chips, Day 2D with 175,000, Day 3 with 1.124 million, Day 4 with 1.5 million and Day 5 with 4.415 million. He bagged 10 million heading into Day 7, finished that day with 13.2 million, and then kept rising through the late stages.

Card Player said Mueller survived his first all-in on Day 6 when his pocket kings held against Tal Herzog’s ace-queen. On Day 7, he chopped with ace-king, then hit a rough patch when Brock Wilson made a runner-runner king-high straight to double through him, leaving Mueller among the shorter stacks by the end of the day.

Day 8 changed everything. He flopped a queen-high straight early, then surged past 30 million when his pocket aces beat Romain Lewis’ pocket kings and sent Lewis out in 17th. With 13 players left, his pocket jacks held against Rami Hammoud’s pocket nines, and with 11 left he got queens in against Michael Gagliano’s ace-king to clinch a spot at the final table.

The late run got him up to more than 60 million before he bagged 48.5 million. The Review-Journal said he briefly sat third with 62.5 million at the 9 p.m. break, then the field paused with nine players remaining.

Mueller said the run has brought back his love for the game. “For this tournament, absolutely. I don’t know after the tournament if I’m gonna love poker again, but I’ll tell you right now, I love it,” he told PokerNews. He also said the August final table should draw a rail from White Rock and Vancouver.

The final table resumes Aug. 3. ESPN2 carries the first night of coverage at 9 p.m. ET, ESPN takes over Aug. 4 at 9 p.m. ET, and the finale airs on ESPN at 10:30 p.m. on Aug. 5.

The Roughrider Poker Tour’s $640 Main Event gets underway at Jackpot Junction Casino and Hotel in Morton, Minnesota, just outside Minneapolis. The stop runs through Sunday, with a champion set to be crowned at the end of the week.

The tournament is using three starting flights over three days. Day 1a begins at 1 p.m. in the casino’s Bingo Hall.

Players start with 60,000 chips. The opening level is 100/200 with a 200 big blind ante, and levels run 40 minutes throughout the event with a 15-minute break every three levels.

Late registration stays open for 12 levels, until the start of level 13, around 10 p.m. Unlimited re-entry is allowed during that window, and late entries are dealt in immediately.

Each Day 1 flight plays down to 15% of the field, rounded up, or through level 16, whichever comes first. The structure sheet also says the game is No Limit Hold’em.

The buy-in is split into $540 for the prize pool, $60 for the entry fee and $40 for dealer and staff fees. An estimated $300,000 prize pool is expected.

The winner gets a WPT Wynn Main Event ticket. PokerNews put that addition at $10,000, while the structure sheet described it as a $10,400 buy-in to the 2026 WPT Main Event at Wynn Las Vegas, paid as an overlay and not taken from the prize pool.

Day 2 restarts Sunday morning at 11 a.m. with all qualifiers combined. The structure sheet says the restart begins at the youngest point of the three flights, or at the start of level 17.

QuintAce is described as a new training tool aimed at bringing more real-world dynamics into solver study. The app bundles AI hand analysis, practice sessions, population-tendency tools and opponent sparring into one study tool.

Poker.org said several online poker platforms, including WPT Global, had been working with QuintAce to provide in-app coaching. The same report said the tool supports no-limit hold’em and pot-limit Omaha, across cash games, squid game and MTT formats, and includes hand galleries built from live tournament hands at WSOP and Triton.

The pitch behind the product is that static solvers have never been proven to beat top human players in live, dynamic games. Dr. Thanh Tran, AceGuardian Technologies’ CEO and founder, said the online poker industry spent five years chasing a myth after misreading landmark 2019 AI research, and that players had mistaken machine equilibrium for human optimal strategy. He said QuintAce is putting adaptable game intelligence directly into players’ hands.

AceGuardian also framed QuintAce as the consumer version of its larger fair-play and detection stack. In launch materials, the company said its enterprise model already protects 30% of real-money poker traffic, and that QuintAce is built on deep reinforcement learning and a dataset of more than five billion hands.

Coverage of the WPT Global rollout was not perfectly uniform. On July 8, pokerfuse said the integrated version was live inside WPT Global and let players review sessions immediately after play without uploading hands, while PokerListings described the launch more narrowly as Texas Hold’em cash-game coaching. Pokerfuse, by contrast, said the tool also handled NLH and PLO cash, Short Deck, AoF tournaments, Global Spins and classic MTTs.

The WPT Global version also offered move-by-move ratings such as Solid, Close or Lacking, and grouped opponents into archetypes like Callers and Closers. It was also described as accessible through the operator’s Settings menu or hand replayer, with every session uploaded automatically for later analysis.

Patrik Antonius said he uses QuintAce to audit specific spots and show where his intuition is wrong, while Jean-Robert Bellande said he ran thirteen of his most-discussed TV hands through the system to see whether they were real mistakes or just memorable clips. In Bellande’s write-up, his biggest concrete leak was a queens fold against Salomon, which he said cost about $172K of EV each time the spot came up.

Bryn Kenney won the King Poker Cup $100,000 King’s Charity Super High Roller in Jeju, South Korea, and the official result gave him $1,954,000 plus the trophy.

The event drew 71 entries and built a $6,674,000 prize pool. It ran over three days at LES A Casino in the Jeju Shinhwa World Resort, and the top 11 finishers made the money.

Poker.org reported that Kenney beat Jesse Lonis heads-up after the two had discussed a deal. Lonis said they were “merely playing for the trophy” by the time the final river was dealt, but the official payouts still listed Kenney as the winner and Lonis as runner-up for $1.3 million.

The rest of the final table was also heavy on big names. Elton Tsang finished third for $880,000, Xuanyi Wang took fourth for $630,000, Xing was fifth for $450,000, Tom Dwan finished sixth for $350,000, David Miscikowski was seventh for $280,000, and Ren Lin was the first player paid after the bubble burst with a $200,000 min-cash.

SoMuchPoker’s live updates said Lonis began heads-up play with 18 million chips to Kenney’s 17 million. Kenney then pulled ahead to 27 million against Lonis’s 8 million before the final hand, when Lonis moved in with king-deuce, Kenney called with jack-ten suited, and a ten on the flop sealed it.

The win pushed Kenney farther ahead on poker’s all-time money list. Poker.org put his recorded tournament earnings at more than $89 million over 19 years, and also noted skepticism about that top ranking because of a handful of huge scores, including his $20 million Triton Million win in 2019. SoMuchPoker said the Jeju victory took him past the $90 million mark.

Lonis also arrived with a much shorter but very hot recent run. Before Jeju, he had seven $1 million-plus scores, all in the past three years, after not recording a five-figure cash until 2020.

The Jeju stop was being framed as part of South Korea’s growing poker scene. Poker.org said Jeju Island has become ground zero for the surge, with the Triton Poker Super High Roller Series already helping make the super high roller circuit there feel established.

Philipp Gruissem won the $200 buy-in No-Limit Hold’em One Day event at WPT Global Festival Panama. He outlasted a 138-entry field and earned $5,650 from the $27,600 prize pool.

PokerNews reported that Gruissem now has more than $11.5 million in live tournament earnings. That total puts him 12th on Germany’s all-time money list. The report also said The Hendon Mob Database listed his previous cash as December 2023, when he finished in the money in the $5,300 WSOP Paradise Main Event for $8,500.

Gruissem reached the nine-handed final table with 1,800,000 chips at blinds of 15,000/30,000. That gave him 60 big blinds and almost twice as many chips as any other player still in contention.

Estefan Foster was the first player to fall. Mike Chapman went out in eighth place, and Carlos Aguad also busted before Daniela Orta exited in sixth after doubling through Fernando Arias with pocket jacks against ace-king and then bowing out.

Christian Correa finished fifth, which was his third in-the-money finish in Panama. He had already cashed in May in the WSOP International Circuit Panama $1,000 Mystery Bounty and $500 Closer ring events.

Gruissem then scored his first knockout when his ace-nine stayed ahead of Arias’ ace-six. He later eliminated Carlos Uribe with king-ten against king-eight, which sent him into heads-up play with a massive lead over Panamanian Alexis Zhu. Gruissem won the final duel and posed for the winner’s photo.

The same report added that Poker Noticias had Gruissem leading the $350 No-Limit Hold’em PKO event at WPT Global Festival Panama, with 172 entrants and 18 players left playing for a $7,900 top prize.

Jamie Dwan won the £2,000 Goliath Super High Roller in Coventry and took home £47,200. The 89-entry event built a £152,200 prize pool and paid the top 10 finishers.

According to PokerNews, the win came just three weeks after Dwan captured the $50,000 No-Limit High Roller at the 2026 World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. That score gave him his first WSOP bracelet and a career-best $2,276,691.

Brandon Sheils finished second for £31,500 after the heads-up duo did not strike a deal. Sheils had already won the £1,500 Goliath High Roller for £54,130 a couple of days earlier.

Daniel Carney took third for £20,550, which was described as the second-largest live cash of his career. He had banked $40,000 in the 2026 WSOP Main Event earlier in the month.

Brandon Harris finished fourth for £14,450. Yuzhou Yin was fifth for £10,650, the first five-figure score in the event, followed by Conor O’Driscoll for £7,900, Tuan Vu for £6,100, Matthew Davenport for £5,000, Paul Tait for £4,600 and Naim Atakas for £4,250.

The broader Grosvenor Goliath festival in Coventry has also been producing huge fields. SoMuchPoker reported that the £100,000 guaranteed Monster Stack drew 2,726 entries, grew the prize pool to £207,100, and ended in an 11-way chop after the average stack fell to eight big blinds and stayed there for more than two hours.

Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open’s Event 2 Flight A drew 365 entries, and 81 players were still in contention at Level 14. The live update put the field at blinds of 1,300/3,000 with a 3,000 ante.

The tournament structure sheet says players start with 20,000 chips. Late registration and unlimited re-entries stay open until the start of Level 9, and the event uses a nine-handed, big blind ante format.

The structure also lists the event as a three-day tournament with eight starting flights. Day 1 is set to continue until 12.5% of the field remains, then survivors move on, while Day 3 starts at 1 pm and plays to a finish.

Hard Rock’s SHRPO announcement said the festival runs July 28 through Aug. 11 in Hollywood, Florida, and that the $400 Deep Stack No-Limit Hold’em begins Wednesday, July 29. The update also said survivors from Flight A return for Day 2 on Sunday at 1 pm.

Lauri Saaskilahti is the first Finnish player to ever make the WSOP Main Event final table, and he will head into the final table with a guaranteed $1 million payday and a shot at the $10 million top prize when play resumes Aug. 3 at Horseshoe Las Vegas.

The Barcelona resident is not a full-time pro. According to Poker.org, he described himself as an amateur who loves poker as a hobby, even though he once played semi-professionally while studying.

That same report traced his Main Event goal back to a layover in California last year. Saaskilahti said he had about six hours to kill on a business trip back to Europe, found his way to Hustler Casino and sat in his favorite game, PLO $10/20/40.

He said he played for three hours and won almost $20,000. He then used that win as motivation to come back to the U.S. and take a shot at the Main Event the next summer.

Saaskilahti also said he wrote down one goal for 2026: “Win the WSOP Main Event.” He said he was already thinking about making the trip when he planned to turn 40 next summer.

His run was not all smooth. He said Day 2 and Day 3 were the toughest because he had a cold, although after that it was “more or less smooth sailing.”

PokerNews reported that he entered Day 4 with 224,000 chips and ran it up to 2.1 million, putting himself among the chip leaders with 533 players left. He more than doubled again by the end of Day 5, then entered Day 8 with 15.6 million chips as one of the shorter stacks among the final 21.

The biggest scare came on Day 7. Poker.org reported that with 35 players still in the hunt, Saaskilahti was all in and at risk for his tournament life against Brock Wilson, holding only 11% equity when he said, “I have some outs.”

PokerNews said the hand was ace-high against Wilson’s flopped top pair of kings, and Saaskilahti spiked an ace on the river to stay alive.

By the time the bags were sealed, he said he felt “surprisingly relaxed.” He finished Day 8 with 37.5 million chips, seventh among the final nine players.

That finish surpassed Finland’s previous deepest Main Event runs. Matti Kuortti’s 25th-place finish in 1997 and Miika Puumalainen’s 59th in 2009 had been the country’s deepest previous results.

Saaskilahti said the three-week break will be spent with family, first in Las Vegas and then in San Diego for Disneyland and Beverly Hills. He also said he wants to use the time for an in-depth review of his opponents and some scenario planning before the live final table, and after it wraps up he plans to return to Barcelona, where he lives and keeps an office.

Jesse Lonis is the chip leader heading into the nine-handed final table of the $100,000 King’s Charity Super High Roller at the King Poker Cup in Jeju. Tom Dwan, Elton Tsang and Bryn Kenney are also still alive, and the event has built a $6,674,000 prize pool from 71 entries.

The top prize is $1,954,000, while every finalist has already locked up at least $200,000. The tournament also carries a charity angle, with KPC announcing that its entire $426,000 administration fee will be donated.

SoMuchPoker reported that Lonis will return with 9,950,000, ahead of Dwan on 5,900,000 and Tsang on 5,125,000. Lonis lost his first stack early on Day 2, re-entered immediately, and then climbed all the way to the lead before play ended.

The road to the final table was active from the start of the day. Day 2 opened with 37 survivors from 57 opening-day entries, then registration stayed open until the start of Level 11 and added another 14 entries to bring the total to 71.

Tony Ren Lin started Day 2 as the chip leader with 1,470,000. Bryn Kenney, Biao Ding and Punnat Punsri were among the players who came back after missing a Day 1 bag, while Calvin Lee, Ryan Plant and Konstantin Held were among the later arrivals.

The bubble burst with Lazauninkas in 12th place, then Lin doubled through Lonis to reach the money before Lonis knocked him out in 11th. An unidentified player followed in 10th, leaving the final table set.

Poker.org noted that Lonis, Tsang and Kenney are regulars in the global super high roller scene, while Dwan is less of a fixture in those fields. The same report said Dwan’s last tournament cash was at the 2024 WSOP, and his last final table came a few months earlier.

The broader KPC series runs from July 25 through August 10 at Les A Casino in Jeju, according to PokerNews, with a KRW 2,000,000,000 guarantee backed by title sponsor QQPK. PokerNews also said the King’s Charity Super High Roller was scheduled for July 28 to 30 with a $100,000 buy-in, and that KPC would waive all personnel service fees and donate 100% of the event administration fees directly to charity.

The final table resumes Thursday, July 30, at 13:30 local time. Blinds will be 50,000/125,000 with a 125,000 big blind ante. The delayed stream will be available on the official King Poker Cup YouTube channel.

Advanced Poker Training ran 1,000,000 simulations of the 2026 WSOP Main Event final table and found Greg Mueller to be Steve Blay’s official winner pick, even though the model gave Lucas Jumalon the best mathematical chance to win. The company’s numbers had Jumalon winning more than 40% of the time while starting with roughly 35% of the chips, but Blay still made Mueller his official winner pick.

Blay said Jumalon’s edge made sense because of ICM pressure. In his view, the other players could not attack as freely because every confrontation carried big payout consequences, and he said the chip leader’s simulated win rate translated into only about 2% more prize money than his ICM expectation.

Jumalon was not completely safe in the model, either. PokerNews reported that he could still bust in 9th place in 1% of the simulations.

Rami Hammoud was the biggest disappointment for the model, as his average finish came in nearly 5% below his ICM value. Blay pointed to Hammoud being “technically an amateur,” scouting reports that say he can be a little overaggressive, and a bad seat draw with Jumalon two seats to his left, where he can wait in the blinds with a massive stack and maximum leverage when Hammoud reaches the cutoff or button.

Mueller and Jamie Shaevel were the biggest overperformers in the simulations, with Mueller singled out as the one who kept jumping off the page. Blay said that came down to decent table position and a lot of experience, and he described Mueller as a three-time WSOP bracelet winner with dozens of cashes dating back before Jumalon was born, plus a former professional hockey player.

PokerTraining.com’s final-table profile put Mueller fourth of the nine players with 48.5 million chips. It listed his live tournament winnings at $3,540,270 before the final table and his biggest prior cash at $460,841, while noting that his bracelet run included a 2009 Limit Hold’em title, a $1,500 Shootout win, and a $10,000 H.O.R.S.E. bracelet in 2019.

Blay said each bot can be tuned across more than 40 characteristics, including reactions to ICM pressure and how willing a player is to risk tournament life, and said the framework can simulate three WSOP Main Event final tables per second. He also compared the approach to election forecasting and pointed to 2016, when Advanced Poker Training correctly identified Qui Nguyen as the most likely winner from just 100 simulations.

The final table was set with Jumalon on 194 million chips, Rami Hammoud on 79 million, and Jamie Shaevel on 56 million. The final nine each locked up at least $1 million, with $10 million for first place, and play is set to resume on Aug. 3.

GGPoker’s Online Poker Millionaires has reached its third episode, and this installment focuses on Denys Chufarin, the Ukrainian pro whose path runs from law to online poker and streaming. The series launched last November on GGPoker’s YouTube channel with POKERfilms, and each episode has followed a different high-stakes player through their routine, mindset and drive.

The earlier episodes featured Alex Theologis and Kelvin Kerber, so Chufarin’s story is the latest turn in a format built around one player at a time. The third episode was directed and edited by Michael Bailey, with narration by Emma Topping.

According to PokerStake, Chufarin learned poker at his grandmother’s hip before qualifying as a lawyer and starting at small stakes. He says he found he could win in the formats he played, and his journey now includes the line, ‘This is not just a career, this is a life,’ along with the claim that he ‘earned $4 million from [depositing] $65.’

The episode also revisits how Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine changed things for him. Chufarin said becoming a father made him think about safety differently, and he and his family went to Thailand for six months before stretching the stay to 16 months.

From there, they moved to British Columbia so he could keep playing against the toughest opponents and keep winning. He is now based there permanently and has played and streamed ever since, calling it ‘the best job in the world’ and saying poker gives him ‘freedom of will and freedom of thought.’

Streaming has a direct payoff through GGPoker’s streamer model, which pays players back for the content they create. Chufarin said he made $4,500 in total rakeback in one week, and the episode says adding tournaments to his schedule made a big difference because he sees them as about winning, the emotion and the moment.

One of the headline moments is his GGMillion$ victory. The episode says he won the weekly $10,000-entry event, which he called the biggest $10k online tournament in the world and said he never imagined he could win.

It closes with his sixth-place finish in the $1,500-entry GG World Championship, where 7,309 players entered, just under $1.4 million was up top, and he sold 14% to viewers through GGPoker before banking $379,801. Poker.org’s earlier coverage of the same episode had already pointed to his move after the invasion, his almost $200,000 online balance and his habit of spending around $50,000 a day on buy-ins.

Merit Poker Cup Day 1b in Northern Cyprus added 121 more entries and left Merit regular Hassan Nashar in front with 885,000 chips. After Day 1b, the $3,500 event had 280 total entries, and after the first two starting flights 138 players had already secured Day 2 seats.

PokerNews said Nashar’s turnaround came after a Day 1a bustout on the last hand. He registered around halfway through Day 1b, then picked up momentum with a six-high bluff against Adrian State before getting paid with trips after a river overbet.

Giorgiy Skhulukhiya was second on 705,000 after folding a full house in a blind-on-blind battle with Alexander Sokolovsky. Yahor Dambrouski finished third on 480,000.

Merit Poker’s site said Day 1b followed the same format as the opening flight, with a 100,000-chip starting stack and ten 40-minute levels. PokerNews said Day 1c was already underway when the counts were published, with late registration open throughout the flight.

Day 1a drew 159 entries and sent 86 players through, while Day 1b added 52 more qualifiers. The field was still expected to grow toward the $1 million guaranteed prize pool before play resumed.

Day 1b began at noon local time at the Merit Royal Diamond Hotel Casino & Spa. The broader festival is the inaugural NOIR Poker Series, which runs from July 27 through August 6 at the same venue and is advertised with more than $6 million in guaranteed prize pools.

Day 2 starts at noon on Thursday, July 30 on Level 11 with blinds of 1,500/2,500 and a 2,500 big blind ante, and late registration remains open for five more levels after the restart.

Andre Winkler Arnold won the Euro Poker Millions Rozvadov main event at King’s Resort after a field of 7,303 entries. The €590 buy-in tournament cleared its €3 million guarantee and ended with a three-way deal at the final table.

SpadePoker reported that the event drew 7,303 entries from 2,119 players and finished with a €3,662,454 prize pool. CardPlayer put total payouts at nearly $4.2 million.

The last three players agreed to an ICM deal, and Arnold took the biggest slice. The two reports listed the same podium in different currencies, with CardPlayer putting Arnold at $482,790, Gennaro Proscia at $338,580 and Ondrej Goetz at $331,170, while SpadePoker listed them at €423,500, €297,000 and €290,500.

CardPlayer said the result was a huge breakthrough for Arnold, whose previous best score was $26,472 from an eighth-place finish in a €380 Circuito Nacional de Poker Rozvadov event in 2024. He also earned 660 Card Player Player of the Year points and moved to the cusp of the top 800 in the 2026 POY race presented by CoinPoker.

SpadePoker called the tournament the largest in Euro Poker Million history and the second largest in King’s Resort history, behind last year’s King’s Million with 7,558 entries. Before the final table, the posted top prize had been €500,000 plus a trophy and a €3,000 King’s Million package, and each finalist had at least €30,709 locked up plus a ticket for the King’s Million European Poker Championship.

Going into the final day, Gennaro Proscia led with more than 56 million chips, and EuroRounders said the final table formed when David Říha eliminated Ionut Decher in 10th place.

PartyPoker Tour Glasgow is set for Aug. 3-9 at Alea Casino Glasgow on the bank of the River Clyde. The stop is the sixth leg of the 2026 PartyPoker Tour and is headlined by a £500 Main Event with a £100,000 guarantee.

According to PokerNews, the festival opens on the afternoon of Aug. 3 with a £150 No-Limit Hold'em Mini Main Event, which is the first of four flights. The Main Event itself uses four £500 Day 1s, with £455 from each entry going into the prize pool and £45 taken as fees, and there are no further deductions from the prize pool.

The rest of the schedule is packed with lower buy-in and specialty events. Side events include a £200 bounty tournament, a £100 turbo, a £60 Red River Bounty, and a £1,000 High Roller, along with mixed-game offerings such as a £60 Pot-Limit H.O.R.S.E. event, a £100 NLHE/PLO mixed event, a £150 PLO 4/5/6 Card event, a £60 Crazy Pineapple Bounty, a £250 PLO Masters event and a £60 Tennessee Hold'em Glasgow Championship.

Alea Casino's poker lounge also offers daily cash games and tournaments in a dedicated poker area, and venue information lists the casino open from 12pm to 6am every day.

The Glasgow return comes with some recent history behind it. Last year's stop drew 256 entrants, built a £111,821 prize pool and paid the top 39 finishers, with Zhen Zhen beating Kyle Scott heads-up for £22,500 and Scott collecting £14,270.

The High Roller also has a defending champion to beat. Tianyi Jiang is the reigning winner after outlasting 33 opponents for £10,900 last year, while online satellites for this stop are available from £0.20 and live satellites cost £60 or £115 throughout the festival.

Aleks Borovkov turned a sixth-place finish from last week into a GGMillion$ title seven days later, taking the $10,000 event for $374,609 and a $10,000 package to the live WSOP Paradise edition.

According to PokerNews, he had reached the final table last week in seventh place and went on to finish sixth for $88,174. This time he returned as the chip leader with 64 big blinds, while Arunas Sapitavicius sat on 52 and Viacheslav Larin was the short stack with 19.

The first 45 minutes of the final table passed without an elimination. Danilo Velasevic was first out in ninth after ace-king fell to Arsenii Malinov, and “Clarity” followed in eighth when a river call with a Broadway straight ran into Duco Haven’s turned flush.

Sapitavicius took seventh for a five-figure score after a clash with Larin, and Haven exited in sixth for $111,017 after Borovkov called his shove with ace-king and rivered an ace. Reigning champion Artem Osmirko was next in fifth, after Larin paired an ace with ace-queen against pocket tens.

Malinov then fell before the final four. A player identified as “Tsintao”, described as a brand-new GGPoker player who had won a $1,050 satellite into the event, was eliminated by Larin with ace-seven against ace-five.

That set up heads-up play with Larin holding a 16,567,756 to 3,495,244 chip lead. Borovkov chipped away, drew level, and then moved ahead after turning a flush and getting paid when Larin backed off a triple-barrel bluff on the river.

The match ended when Borovkov raised with ace-eight of spades and called Larin’s 18-big-blind shove with ace-six. An eight on the turn left Larin needing a seven to make a straight, but the river was a five, leaving him second for $293,725.

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.

PokerStars has turned the Sunday Million’s 20th anniversary into a $5 million guaranteed summer series, with daily $109 Phase 1 heats running through September 6. Players who survive a heat carry their chip stacks into Phase 2, which PokerStars calls the Finals.

The anniversary edition is being run as a phased progressive knockout, or PKO, event. In that format, each player starts with a $25 bounty, and anyone who knocks out an opponent gets half of that bounty immediately, with the other half added to their own bounty.

Each Phase 1 costs $109, starts players with 10,000 chips, uses 10-minute levels and opens at 40/80/10a. Late registration lasts 100 minutes, or about the end of Level 9, up to three re-entries are allowed while it is open, and play in each Phase 1 ends when only 3% of the field remains.

Depending on participation and the payout structure, the money bubble could even hit during the opening Phase 1 flights. That means it is possible to cash without advancing to the Finals.

PokerStars is also stacking on cheaper qualification paths. Satellites start at $0.55, while Special Edition Spin & Go’s begin at $0.75 and $4. In the $0.75 version, the $109 Phase 1 ticket is the winner-take-all prize 2,000 times out of 1 million, and in the $4 version the ticket lands 1.25% of the time.

The company is also using promotions to seed the field. One Ticket Machine giveaway puts $100,000 in $109 Phase 1 tickets up for grabs each week, and Jet Set Season is adding another $300,000 worth of Phase 1 tickets.

The buy-in is back down to the standard $109 after recent anniversary editions used a $215 price tag. Pokerfuse said that drop means PokerStars needs roughly 50,000 entries to cover the $5 million guarantee without an overlay, compared with last year’s 28,444-entry event that came up $311,200 short of its $6 million promise.

Rami Hammoud turned his last $1,000 into a WSOP Main Event seat after he was close to quitting the Main Event altogether.

According to poker.org, Hammoud arrived in Las Vegas on June 18 with $20,000 for the World Series of Poker, but by early July he was down to his last $1,000. He said he was getting stomped, his confidence was low, and he had zero intention of playing the Main Event.

That changed after a chance encounter in the hallway at Paris Casino. Hammoud said he ran into another Montreal player, told him he was done and wanted to go home, and heard an offer to buy a big piece of him if he played.

He took the message as a confidence boost, fired the last $1,000 into a satellite, and cashed it. That meant he did not have to sell a big piece, and it put him into the Main Event after he had already been ready to leave town.

Hammoud said poker is "more than a passion, but less than a profession," and that when he tried to make it his work, it stopped feeling exciting. He said that after the 2025 World Series he stopped opening solvers and decided to focus on having fun rather than maximizing profit.

He also said this was his fourth shot at the Main Event and that he had never cashed it before. In the past, he said, he played as if the tournament was the most important thing ever and tried to survive as much as possible.

That looser approach showed up during the run itself. Hammoud said he checked out of his hotel every morning, dropped his luggage at the bell desk, and headed to his seat with the same line in his head each day: "I have a flight to catch." He said that mindset carried all the way to the final table, where he felt ready to go at any time and more aggressive than other players.

PokerNews added that Hammoud got rolling on Day 6, when his stack jumped from 2,630,000 to 17,400,000 after he cracked Darren Rabinowitz’s ace-king with ace-jack. He bagged the sixth-largest stack with 62 players left after Day 7, then finished that night second in chips behind Lucas Jumalon despite giving up late double-ups to Jumalon and Jamie Shaevel.

He also showed some discipline on Day 8 by folding pocket queens to a shove from Antonio Galiana. As the final table setup stands, Hammoud starts second in chips behind Jumalon and has already locked up at least $1 million. Play resumes on Aug. 3.

Romanian player “getoverhere” won 888poker’s $80,000 Mystery Bounty Main Event after coming to the final table with fewer chips than the leader and still running it down. The $109 buy-in tournament drew 776 entries, including re-entries, and ended with only a slight overlay on the guarantee.

888poker’s own promo page describes mystery bounties as a format where each player is assigned a random bounty, a mystery envelope appears when the phase begins, and eliminating an opponent wins that prize. In other words, players can pick up bounty money even if they do not win the event itself.

The mystery bounties kicked in at the start of Level 18. One of the more eye-catching runs belonged to Costa Rica’s “estebanss12,” who finished 22nd for $232 after knocking out three opponents while the bounties were live.

Those three bounty hits included the minimum envelope of $28.02, plus prizes of $3,200 and $8,000. PokerNews said the three bounty payouts totaled $11,516, which was more than $3,600 above what the eventual champion collected from the tournament result alone.

“LeoJoseCarne” started fifth in chips with 28 big blinds, but lost a big chunk of the stack in queens-versus-jacks against “MichaelBusto” and never recovered. “morgan33332” later fell after getting in for 10 big blinds with ace-jack against “getoverhere’s” pocket queens, leaving four players.

From there, “TreeOML14” was knocked out in a blind-versus-blind clash with “getoverhere,” who called a near-14-big-blind shove with pocket queens and held through the river. That set up a heads-up match against “simenuts” after “MichaelBusto” was sent out on a jack-ten versus king-queen all-in that gave “getoverhere” two pair on the turn.

“getoverhere” took a big lead into the final duel, holding 71.4 big blinds to 11.7 for “simenuts.” The match was over six minutes after heads-up play began, when “simenuts” jammed with jack-eight, “getoverhere” called with ace-three of spades, and the all-spade flop left “simenuts” drawing to a runner-runner full house before they were drawing dead on the turn.

The next $109 buy-in, $80,000 guaranteed Mystery Bounty Main Event is set to shuffle up and deal at 6:00 p.m. BST on Aug. 2, with satellites starting at $0.10.

The 2026 Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open opens with Event 1, the $300 Quad Stack Slater Scoops NLH. The opener carries a $100,000 guarantee and awards a $5,300 SHRPO Championship seat to first place.

The official event page says Andy Slater is hosting the tournament. It starts at 4 pm, gives players 40,000-chip starting stacks, and runs 20-minute levels.

Late registration and unlimited re-entries stay open until the start of Level 13 at 8:30 pm. The page describes the tournament as the special opener that kicks off the series.

The primary SHRPO flyer and the daily schedule both list Event 1 for Tuesday, July 28. The daily sheet spells it out as “The Opener – Slater Scoops Quad Stack NLH” with a $300 buy-in, the $100,000 guarantee, and the added seat to Event #43.

Hard Rock’s June announcement says the full SHRPO run goes from Tuesday, July 28 to Tuesday, Aug. 11. It lists a $400 Deep Stack No Limit Hold’em with a $1 million guarantee for Wednesday, July 29, and says “The Big 4” finals will be staged simultaneously at the final tables with $4.75 million in combined prize pools.

The same release says the schedule also includes an $800 Platinum Stack with a $250,000 guarantee on Tuesday, Aug. 4, and a $10,000 Eight-Handed event with a $500,000 guarantee on Tuesday, Aug. 11. It adds that last year’s Big 4 paid out more than $6.3 million in total cash, and that Jake Cody won the SHRPO Championship for $510,850.

Henri Perez Lopez won the RunGood Poker Series $600 The Hendon Mob Mid-Major Championship at Thunder Valley Casino Resort, outlasting a field of 1,096 entries for the $83,380 top prize. The win came from a $577,720 prize pool and gave Lopez his first RGPS title.

PokerNews reported that Lopez had told friends he was going for first place, and he said after the win that it was his moment and that he knew he could get there. Before the day began, he had just over $36,000 in live career earnings on his Hendon Mob page, so the result doubled his career total.

Lopez arrived at the closing stretch with a huge advantage. After he knocked out Gregory Pon in fifth place, he was the chip leader with about twice the stack of Jedidiah Hoffman, then sent Aaron Overton out in fourth and Hoffman in third to reach heads-up play with Ryan Awwad.

The heads-up match turned several times. Lopez went in with more than 85% of the chips in play, but Awwad fought back by winning four double-ups and even built a two-to-one lead of his own before Lopez steadied the match.

Lopez said he felt calm through the swingy duel, adding that he knew Awwad was a good player and that both of them made great moves. He also said he was at peace when he lost his chips, but kept going because he knew it was the right decision.

The final hand ended when Awwad moved all-in on the button for about 4,500,000 with 8♠5♠ and Lopez called with A♥5♥. Lopez flopped a flush draw on 4♣J♥3♥, hit it on the 7♥ turn, and sealed the title when the 6♣ completed the board.

Awwad finished second for $55,000. In earlier heads-up spots, Lopez had already shown the kind of run that kept him alive, including a river flush with Q♦6♦ and a huge double-up after making a wheel and dodging boats on the river.

Americas Cardroom has put out a behind-the-scenes video revisiting the confrontation between its pro Alex Foxen and Martin Kabrhel during Event No. 36 at the 2026 World Series of Poker. The release frames the clash as more than a single blowup, with the footage tracing how the tension built during the $100,000 High Roller No-Limit Hold’em event.

In a release carried by AccessNewsWire, the company said the video follows Foxen from opening day through his sixth-place finish at the final table. The story line includes his first entry, a re-entry after that busted, and his move into Day 2 with 1,440,000 chips.

The video also centers on the exchanges between Foxen and Kabrhel. It adds context around disagreements over table conduct, personal items, pace of play, and when tournament staff should step in, and it shows repeated floor calls, reactions from other players, and Foxen’s comments away from the table.

Event No. 36 ran from June 10 to 13 at Horseshoe and Paris Las Vegas. The event drew 115 entries and created an $11.04 million prize pool.

Foxen’s stack later fell to a fraction of one big blind before he recovered to finish sixth for $522,347. Kabrhel placed ninth for $255,491.

The video comes from Foxen’s first WSOP campaign as an Americas Cardroom Pro. He joined the team in May alongside Chance Kornuth and Chris Hunichen, and he led the squad during the series with 14 cashes and $2,067,005 in listed payouts.

His largest result came in Event No. 44, the $10,000 Super Turbo Bounty No-Limit Hold’em event, where he beat a field of 466 entries to win $594,246 and his fourth career WSOP bracelet. He also earned $300,000 for fourth in Event No. 7 and $267,993 for seventh in Event No. 47.

The full video is available through Americas Cardroom’s YouTube channel.

A £100 Monster Stack side event at the Grosvenor Goliath ended in an 11-way chop, an unusually wide live-poker deal. Hongtao Sun was announced as the champion on £13,255, while Ryan Bignell collected £4,300 after the deal.

Reports differed on the field size. PokerStrategy said the event drew 2,276 entries and more than doubled its £100,000 guarantee. PokerNews and Somuchpoker reported 2,726 entries across four flights, which built a £207,100 prize pool.

The chop came with 11 players left, after the average stack had sat at about eight big blinds for more than two hours. Seven players left with five-figure payouts, and Bignell, who was reportedly on two big blinds, turned what looked like a likely £1,000 min-cash into £4,300.

Before the deal, the original first-place prize had been expected to be around £30,000. Sun held the chip lead and still ended up with the title and £13,255.

The size of the agreement was unusual by live-poker standards. PokerNews said deals rarely stretch beyond two or three players, and Somuchpoker called the 11-handed agreement unprecedented in live poker, adding that casinos and tournament directors usually only allow deals once the official final table, typically eight or nine players, has been reached. For comparison, Somuchpoker said an 8-way chop occurred at the Goliath Main Event in 2024.

The Goliath festival has grown into a major live stop over the years. MainEventTravel said this year’s festival runs from July 27 to August 6 at Coventry Building Society Arena, and traced the Main Event’s rise from 1,765 entries in 2011 to 10,584 entries in the tenth-anniversary Goliath X.

PokerNews’ live coverage said the 2026 Goliath had processed 6,689 entries by 11:00 a.m. BST on July 28, putting it on track to challenge its own attendance record again.

Day 1c added 1,526 runners and sent 28 players through to Day 2. The event is running with nine scheduled flights, and cards went in the air for the first flight at 11:00 a.m. BST on July 25.

The Goliath returned to Coventry from July 23 to August 2. The Main Event carries a £200 buy-in and an estimated £2 million prize pool for 2026, with the buy-in unchanged from last year.

Attendance has climbed every year since the first Goliath in 2011, apart from the COVID-19 years when the tournament moved online. The inaugural event drew 1,765 players, while last year’s Main Event set the current record at 12,961 entries and generated £1,970,600.

That 12,961-entry field also made the 2025 Goliath the 16th-largest live poker tournament ever recorded. Last year’s winner, Paul Worsley, turned a £200 investment into £316,640.

The build-up to 2026 already included more than 1,300 pre-registrations. Grosvenor also said online satellites and tickets were feeding into the flagship event, with direct routes into one of the Main Event’s nine starting flights starting at £30 and feeder satellites from £1.

The company said the Grosvenor Poker Live app supports debit card and voucher buy-ins on iOS and Android, letting players secure seats in advance. Live Event Credit from online satellites can be used across the full Goliath schedule.

A separate July preview said Grosvenor and GGPoker struck a May partnership that opened the door for GGPoker players to play satellites and online Day 1s of major Grosvenor live events, including Goliath. That same article said GGPoker offers cash boosts of up to 20% to players who qualify for a Grosvenor event or buy in using their GGPoker balance.

The preview also pointed to the Irish Open as a comparison, noting that attendance there rose from 1,880 in 2021 to 2,040 in 2022 after PokerStars began offering satellites, before reaching 5,003 entrants in 2025.

GGPoker is adding $18 million in extra prizes around the international leg of WSOP Online as the bracelet series returns this summer. The promotion sits on top of 33 WSOP bracelet events and is meant to spread value beyond the players who make the deepest runs.

Pokerfuse reported two slightly different date ranges in its coverage. Its July 24 preview put the series at August 16 through September 29, while another giveaway write-up described it as running August 17 through September 30.

The series is in its seventh edition since debuting in 2020. Since live WSOP returned in 2021, the international online festival has kept the same 33-bracelet format each year.

GGPoker said the $18 million package is designed to reach players more evenly, including those who do not run far in the tournaments. It includes exclusive Freerolls and Flipouts for all participants, plus $13 million in prizes outside the tournament tables through cash-game leaderboards, new-player bonuses and signature promotions.

The promotional side also turns the series into a continent-and-country race. Players are split into Europe, Eurasia, the Americas and Asia Pacific for Continental Flipouts, where all players from the bracelet winner’s continent can enter a freeroll Flipout with a prize pool worth up to $250,000.

The country competition uses bracelet wins, runner-up finishes and third-place finishes to build national rankings. The strongest countries can play for up to $200,000 in extra value, and the continent and country promotions together are worth $4 million.

Every bracelet winner also gets a WSOP Paradise Super Pass Package worth $30,000. GGPoker has set aside $1 million for the 33 winners, and the pass leads into WSOP Paradise in December on Paradise Island.

Away from the bracelet series, GGPoker is also running a $200,000 PLO leaderboard for August, a broader $7.5 million in monthly leaderboards split into eight segments, Rush & Cash Fridays, and daily $100,000 Flipouts for players who hit especially big pots or take especially bad beats. New players can choose between a 100% deposit match worth up to $600 or $100 in free play with a minimal deposit, and the Honeymoon promotion offers 30 daily missions worth up to $350 in cash and tournament tickets.

The 2026 push follows a 2025 series that generated more than $119.5 million in prize pools across almost 165,000 entries. Last year’s $5,000 Main Event carried a $25 million guarantee, topped $28.3 million, and was described as the third-largest online poker tournament ever held, with Benjamin “bencb” Rolle winning nearly $3.9 million after making the final table for a second straight year.

The inaugural Merit Poker Noir Series gets underway today in North Cyprus, replacing the old Dolce Vita Series and putting more than $6 million in guaranteed prize pools into play. The festival is being staged at the Merit Royal Diamond Hotel Casino & Spa.

PokerNews said the new Noir identity was built around old Hollywood glamour and cinematic nightlife. The festival runs through August 6, and it is followed immediately at the same venue by the Onyx High Roller Series, giving the resort nearly three straight weeks of back-to-back tournament action.

The opening event is the $3,500 Merit Poker Cup, which carries a $1 million guarantee. It is a three-day tournament with three opening flights, and the first one, Day 1a, begins at 12 p.m.

Day 1b starts at the same time on July 29. Players looking for a quicker path to Day 2 can jump into the Day 1c turbo flight that evening, where blind levels are cut to 25 minutes.

Each starting flight plays 10 levels. Day 1a uses 40-minute blind levels and a 100,000 starting stack, while late registration and unlimited reentries stay open until the end of Level 15, five levels into Day 2.

The $3,500 buy-in is a step up from last year’s $2,200 opener. That event drew 730 entries, was won by Xiaosheng Zheng, and paid out a $225,000 top prize after he defeated Gerard Carbo Santamaria heads-up. Mahmut Sanli finished third.

PokerNews will be on the floor throughout the series for live updates from the three marquee tournaments. After the Merit Poker Cup comes the $7,500 High Roller, which also has a $1 million guarantee.

The centerpiece is the $5,500 Main Event, which carries a $3 million guaranteed prize pool. It features four starting flights beginning on August 2, with the champion set to be crowned on August 6.

The rest of the schedule includes a $3,300 Mystery Bounty with a $300,000 guarantee, a $3,300 Big Bounty, a $3,300 Pot-Limit Omaha 5-Card Knockout, and a $330 Women’s Championship. The festival also includes satellites and side events throughout.

Merit Poker began in 2008 and has awarded more than $40 million in prize pools since then. The neighboring Merit Crystal Cove Hotel houses the daily cash-game room, which has 30 tables and spreads common stakes of $2/$5, $5/$5 and $5/$10 no-limit hold’em.

Merit Poker president Songül Bekem said, “The development of Merit Poker is a common achievement for all the players and each member of our team. It’s time for us to take one more step up, and it is your turn to feel the real Poker experience.”

PokerStars brought back WCOOP Boot Camp as a pre-WCOOP warm-up, pairing tournament action with free coaching and ticket giveaways for players trying to sharpen their game before the main series.

The exact scale of the promotion was described a little differently across reports. A Poker.org announcement said the Boot Camp would run from August 2 to 17, feature 130 events, and carry more than $6.5 million in guaranteed prizes. Later 2025 coverage from PokerNews, Primedope and BBZ Poker described the same warm-up as running August 3 to 18 with 137 tournaments across 69 unique events and more than $9 million in guarantees.

That report said the series was meant as a learning opportunity even with the prize money on offer. That version of the schedule split play into Low and High tracks, listed satellites from $0.55, and put two Main Events on August 16, a $109 Low Main Event with a $500,000 guarantee and a $1,050 High Main Event with a $300,000 guarantee.

The same report said the schedule mixed in a wide range of formats, including HORSE, 2-7 single draw, turbos, mystery bounties and progressive KO events. It also said there were 65 events on the slate and that players could almost play a different game every day of the series.

The coaching side was a big part of the pitch. That report said BBZ Poker coaches would host free strategy sessions every Friday from 1 to 4 p.m. CEST on the BBZ Discord, with passwords for special centroll tournaments afterward that awarded $1,000 or more in WCOOP tickets.

Other coverage of the 2025 promotion described three free coaching sessions on August 1, 8 and 15, with BBZ founder Jordan Drummond leading them on Discord and ticket giveaways. BBZ said recordings would also be available for anyone who could not join live.

The promotion also included extra paths to prizes. PokerNews said the WCOOP Boot Camp Leaderboard paid out $60,000 in prizes to the top 100 players in events up to $215, while the Ticket Machine offered $150,000 in WCOOP tickets and required opt-in through the Challenges window starting July 31.

Primedope and BBZ added that the Ticket Machine used two prize draws on August 12 and August 19, each worth $75,000 in tickets, and that players could qualify by completing either of two challenges, playing 10 Boot Camp events or finishing in the money in two events.

Benjamin 'Spraggy' Spragg, a PokerStars ambassador and WCOOP champion, summed up the angle as prep work. He said Boot Camp was a fun and focused way to practice, test new strategies and get tournament-ready before WCOOP kicked off.

GTO Wizard rolled out a broad set of Pot-Limit Omaha upgrades over the past two months, with heads-up PLO now live and fully customizable from preflop to the river. The package adds nodelocking, persistent player profiles, postflop ICM for tournament spots, faster river solves, and a bigger tree size for deeper-stacked spots.

The new heads-up tools are meant to make study more exploit-focused. Users can lock in an opponent’s mistakes at a single node, then build player profiles.

The company lists eight default profiles, including a GTO-savvy opponent, fish, calling stations, maniacs, TAG regs, LAG regs, nits, and a Glass Cannon. The Glass Cannon is someone who attacks aggressively but defends cautiously.

The profile system is trainable as a custom solution, while a nodelock only defines behavior in one spot. That distinction matters in the new PLO tools, because profiles are applied across the entire tree and can be used in the Trainer to play full hands against a chosen opponent type.

Postflop ICM is now built into custom PLO solving for regular and bounty tournaments. To use it, players customize an MTT tree and set the equity model to ICM.

Speed got a bump too. PLO river spots now solve about twice as fast while keeping the same 0.1% pot exploitability, and the maximum tree size was increased to handle deeper-stacked solves. The same technical work also carried over to Hold’em, where NLHE spots now solve about 3x to 6x faster without losing accuracy.

PokerNews framed the update against how hard PLO is to study, pointing out that four-hole-card poker has around 270,000 starting hand combinations compared with 1,326 in two-card poker. Its first look at the solver said the launch version already covered every flop, turn, and river with no missing runouts or gaps in the tree, and that custom solving could build scenarios in seconds.

The roadmap is still active. 5-card PLO research is underway, while PokerNews said mobile support and some advanced reporting and tracking features were not yet available at launch. Aggregated reports and an ever-expanding preflop library are also in the works.

Octopi Poker is opening 24 hours of free access to its Octopi Professional subscription on Thursday, July 30, in a promotion built around a WSOP Main Event final-table preview with ambassador Matt Hunt. The free window starts at 7am PT, and the livestream begins at 10am PT on Octopi Poker’s YouTube channel.

Octopi Professional normally costs $65 a month or $600 a year. According to Poker.org, the code “POKERORG” unlocks two free months on an annual plan, and after the preview users can try the tools themselves for $0.

The preview will use Octopi’s “The Vault” to simulate tricky spots and study them. Hunt plans to work from the actual seat draw and stack sizes for all nine returning players, then walk through the table dynamics, expected spots, and the adjustments the finalists will need to make.

The session lands just before the WSOP Main Event final table, which PokerNews says is now set. Lucas Jumalon leads the nine-handed field with 194 million chips, with Rami Hammoud on 79 million and Jamie Shaevel on 56 million.

Jumalon reached the top by eliminating reigning Aussie Millions Main Event champion Malcolm Trayner in 10th place. He had started Day 8 with 40.8 million chips, climbed to 155 million by dinner break, and finished the night on 194 million.

The remaining nine players are guaranteed at least $1 million, and the winner will collect $10 million and a diamond bracelet. The final table resumes on August 3.

Carson Wieland won the WSOP Circuit Choctaw Main Event, earning his first Circuit ring and $268,245 after beating a field of 1,117 entries at Choctaw Casino and Resort.

The Event #14 $1,700 No Limit Hold’em Main Event carried a $1 million guarantee, but the prizepool climbed to $1,692,255 and paid the top 168 finishers. Poker.org described the win as the largest score of Wieland’s career.

Wieland said he had built momentum through Day 2 and came into the final table with an above-average stack. He started the table fifth in chips, but felt the dynamics were working for him rather than the other way around. He also had some history of coming close before, including multiple Circuit final tables, and his previous cash in this event was $4,380 in January.

Heads-up, Alexander Ho held the lead at the start, but Wieland fought back. In Poker.org’s instant recap, one key hand saw Ho limp the button, Wieland raise from the blinds and Ho shove about 15 million, only for Wieland’s eights to hold and give him a massive double. Another hand later in the match had Ho limp again, Wieland jam about 9 million, and the full double narrowed the gap further.

SpadePoker also reported that Wieland doubled his stack twice to seize the heads-up lead. In its card-by-card rundown of the finish, Ho turned over ace-king against Wieland’s pocket fours, the flop gave Wieland a full house, Ho picked up a live royal flush draw on the turn, and the river blanked to end it.

The run had a loud rail behind it. A big group of friends cheered every major pot, and Wieland said his wife was home with their four children while he chased the title.

Wieland said the score would not change his life, but it would mean a little less stress.

MGM Resorts said the Potomac Summer Poker Open returns to MGM National Harbor from Aug. 5-17 with 23 trophy events and more than $1.5 million in guaranteed prize pools. The series is being run with BetMGM Poker and is anchored by a $3,000 Main Event with a $750,000 guarantee.

The opening no-limit hold’em event has a $500,000 guarantee and a $600 entry. A $500 Monumental Stack with a $100,000 guarantee is also on the schedule.

The rest of the lineup leans into variety. Mixed-game events include TORSE, Mixed PLO, 8-Game Mix, PLO 8 and Big O, while bounty events include Double Board PLO Bomb Pot, 5-Card PLO Bounty and Cakes Classic Bounty NLH.

The Main Event runs Aug. 14-17, with starting flights on Aug. 14 and 15 and Day 2 on Aug. 16. The schedule PDF says MGM National Harbor is no longer withholding auto-gratuity from buy-ins for staff, and instead each event has an optional add-on that is included in the total buy-in shown on the schedule.

PokerNews reported that last year’s Potomac Poker Open Main Event drew 377 entries, generated a $1,017,900 prize pool and ended with Robert Anderson beating Lucas Vergara heads-up for $211,915. This year’s champion will be crowned at the final table on Aug. 17.

Baruch Fishman turned a single bullet into a Borgata Almighty Stack title, winning the $500 event at the 2026 Borgata Summer Poker Open for $108,840. The Philadelphia cash-game player and dental technician outlasted a huge field after a three-way ICM deal and a heads-up finish.

According to PokerNews, Fishman had only $6,172 in live tournament earnings across five recorded cashes before this run. He said he had just started playing tournaments and called the score the deepest he had ever gone.

The event drew 2,209 entries and built a $927,780 prize pool. Just under 24 hours of poker were played from the first shuffle, and 279 players made the money.

By the final table, Fishman was fifth in chips with 16 million, well behind John Malczan’s 75 million and Yuriy Kudrynskyy’s 57.5 million. William Shaw had 31 million, John Wilson 29.5 million and Raymond Ferretti 12 million.

Malczan had already done a lot of the damage on Day 3, first by helping reach the nine-handed table and then by busting Toby Gafner in seventh to set the final six. Ferretti was the first to fall at the final table when his pocket eights ran into Fishman’s pocket kings, and Wilson next exited when his ace-jack failed against kings.

After a break, the final three agreed to an ICM chop but still played for the trophy, with an extra $15,480 reserved for the eventual champion. Fishman then quickly doubled through Shaw with aces, Shaw took third, and Kudrynskyy’s final shove with king-six ran into Fishman’s ace-nine to end the tournament.

Fishman said the win felt unreal and that he had run “so pure” on Day 2, holding in every all-in. He also said he enjoyed tournaments more than cash games, but had to return to his normal job that evening and had no immediate tournament plans.

Jamie Shaevel, a cash-game regular at Commerce Casino in Los Angeles, is heading into the WSOP Main Event final table with a life-changing score already locked up. PokerNews said he will return with 56 million chips, the third-largest stack among the final nine, and at least $1 million guaranteed.

That is a big turn for a player who says almost all of his poker is cash. In a Poker.org interview, Shaevel said his schedule is not built for tournaments because he has “a couple of kids,” and that he is normally found at Commerce almost exclusively.

He has also kept his tournament volume tiny. PokerNews said the Main Event is basically the only tournament he plays all year, and Shaevel said the event suits him better because it is deeper and slower than most tournaments.

The poker habit goes back a long way. Shaevel said he watched poker since high school, played poker nights with high school friends, and made most of his friends in college through the game. He studied economics at Northeastern University, thought finance was in his future, did an internship, and said he eventually told his parents he would try poker for a year and see what happened.

The rail around him has grown along with the run. Shaevel said he has been hearing from friends ranging from people he talks to every week to people he has not spoken to in 30 years, and that his wife and dad stood on the rail for 12 hours on each of the last two days. Poker.org also noted that this was not the first time friends had shown up in matching shirts for him.

This year has felt different from the stressful runs he has had before. Shaevel said earlier deep Main Event trips always came with the sense that one mistake or one big hand could end everything, but this time he felt very at peace and said he would not care if he busted.

That calm has been a contrast to his earlier feature-table experiences. Shaevel said he had played the Main Event feature table about three times, all long ago, and remembers busting every time. He also said one earlier group of friends came out wearing shirts for him, and he was out about an hour into it.

The current run has already had a few sharp swings. Shaevel got new life after a double-up with a full house against Evagoras Evagorou, then knocked out Tolga Karakaya in 11th place when his jacks held up against ace-ten.

Before the final table was set, Shaevel was 14th of 21 with 17.1 million chips and still in reach of the $10 million first prize. At that point, Malcolm Trayner had the Day 7 lead with 63.2 million, while Shaun Deeb had 31.3 million, Hossein Ensan had 29.7 million and Todd Brunson had 7.8 million.

Shaevel has cashed eight times in the Main Event, and his best previous finish was 100th place in 2011 for $54,851. The final table returns on Aug. 3.

Harrah’s Resort Atlantic City was back on the WSOP Circuit calendar, with PlayNJ reporting a stop from Aug. 13-24 and a $1.5 million guaranteed prize pool. The outlet said the series would bring more than a week of tournament poker to the Boardwalk cardroom, but that Harrah’s had not yet released a detailed schedule, buy-ins or starting flights. Caesars Entertainment and WSOP.com listed the Atlantic City stop for Aug. 14-25.

The stop fit a long Harrah’s history with the tour. Caesars said the resort hosted the inaugural WSOP Circuit stop in 2005 and had been a regular fixture through 2020. PlayNJ said Harrah’s had built a reputation as one of the Circuit’s go-to East Coast venues. Card Player said the last Atlantic City Circuit stop in early March 2020 was canceled before completion, and the main event never got off the ground.

Harrah’s executives pitched the return as a strong fit for the property. Joseph Giunta said the energy from these events reaches everyone from seasoned players to guests who just want to be part of the action, and Gregg Klein said the event reinforces Harrah’s commitment to premier gaming experiences and its place as a destination for poker fans.

The broader WSOP brand still gives the stop some weight. Caesars said the World Series of Poker has awarded more than $4 billion in prize money since 1970, and that the 2024 series drew 229,553 entrants and more than $438 million in prizes. WSOP.com said the 2024/2025 Circuit season paid out more than $168 million across 45 stops, 729 tournaments and more than 291,000 entries, before the tour shifted to a January-through-December calendar in 2026, with 17 U.S. stops and 12 international stops.

Atlantic City’s poker scene has also been thinner than it was before the pandemic. Card Player said the city had five poker rooms before COVID, but Golden Nugget and Caesars never reopened theirs, Borgata remained the market leader, and its Winter Poker Open main event drew 932 entries. The outlet also said no Borgata Poker Open was on the rest-of-year schedule.

Michael Gagliano of Rockaway will return to the WSOP Main Event final table next week with 46.5 million chips, good for fifth place among the nine remaining players. He is already guaranteed at least $1 million and will play for the $10 million top prize when the $10,000 No-Limit Hold’em championship resumes in Las Vegas on Aug. 3-5.

The 41-year-old has been through this grind before. This is his 17th Main Event, and he said that before last year’s 148th-place finish he had only one cash and no Day 4 finishes in the event. He also has coached poker at Gags30Poker since 2010.

His run to the final table was a long one. He bought in for $10,000 and started Day 1b with 60,000 chips, then bagged 93,000 to finish 250th out of 759 entrants. He had 135,000 after Day 2abc, then slipped to 300,000 chips, or 12 big blinds, going into Day 5.

The climb got much steeper after that. He finished Day 5 with 5,215,000 chips, which put him 29th among 174 survivors. Later in the event, he doubled through Shaun Deeb with pocket tens to reach 29.2 million, then took the chip lead when pocket kings held against Hossein Ensan’s ace-queen.

Gagliano later crossed the 100 million mark and sent Antonio Galiana out in 12th place. He then lost 26.5 million chips to Greg Mueller in an ace-king-versus-queens hand before Malcolm Trayner busted in 10th, leaving Gagliano with 46.5 million and fifth place at the restart.

Only two of the nine finalists came from the 9,208-player field as bracelet winners. Coverage on Gagliano’s own WSOP hardware was not fully consistent: Poker.org described him as a three-bracelet winner, while Card Player said he has four WSOP bracelets in no-limit hold’em, including a 2016 $2,500 event that paid $448,463 and later titles in 2022, 2023 and an online mystery bounty event whose results were not yet posted.

That Main Event stage still means a lot to him. He told reporters he grew up watching the tournament on ESPN and called the chance to play it a dream. The first two nights of final-table action air at 9 p.m. on ESPN2, and the finale airs at 10:30 p.m. on ESPN.

Americas Cardroom will run The Moneymaker Bubble Effect on Tuesday, July 28, at 8:30 p.m. ET. The online event costs $0.10 to enter, guarantees $10,000, and gives the player who lands on the money bubble a $2,650 seat to one of the site’s upcoming Dual Mystery Bounty Venoms.

The promo is built around Chris Moneymaker’s bubble exit in the 2026 World Series of Poker Main Event. PokerNews reported that he was the 1,383rd-place finisher, the stone bubble, after the field had already reached hand-for-hand play. The Review-Journal likewise reported that Moneymaker was eliminated early on Day 4 and that the top 1,382 places got paid, with a minimum cash of $15,000.

A companion watch party runs on Americas Cardroom’s official Twitch channel at 7 p.m. ET. The stream is set to feature Moneymaker’s reactions, analysis, and unfiltered takes on ESPN’s coverage of the 2026 WSOP Main Event, along with details on an exclusive first-time deposit bonus and reload bonus.

The theme reaches back to Moneymaker’s 2003 WSOP Main Event win. According to AccessNewsWire, he qualified through an $86 online satellite, beat Sammy Farha heads-up, and collected $2.5 million, a result that helped create the so-called Moneymaker Effect, the push for more players to satellite into major live events.

The Venom seat ties into Americas Cardroom’s 25th-anniversary push. GamblingNews reported that the Dual Mystery Bounty Venoms run from August 13 through September 2 and carry $15 million in combined guarantees, split between a $12 million no-limit hold’em event and a $3 million pot-limit Omaha event. Both events have a $2,650 buy-in, eight Day 1 flights, $5,000 minimum Mystery Bounties, and top bounties of $500,000 in hold’em and $250,000 in Omaha.

BetRivers Poker is bringing back its Multi-State Summer Series from Aug. 2 to 16. The online event set will cover Michigan, Pennsylvania, Delaware and West Virginia, with 96 championship events and more than $450,000 in guaranteed prize pools.

PokerNews reported that players will be able to buy in directly or qualify through daily satellites. The schedule mixes deepstack tournaments, progressive knockouts, six-max events, hyper turbos and PLO, along with marquee weekend majors.

The Main Event is set for Sunday, Aug. 16. It carries a $200 buy-in and a $35,000 guarantee.

PokerNews also said the series will hand out leaderboard prizes worth more than $10,000 across Gold and Silver boards. Points are earned by cashing in events, and only a player’s best five results count, so missing a stop does not end a run at the standings.

Top 20 finishers on the Gold Leaderboard and top 25 on the Silver Leaderboard will receive tournament ticket prizes. Pokerfuse later broke the boards out as $8,500 for Gold and $1,500 for Silver, with the Gold side tied to the higher buy-in bracket and the Silver side to the lower one.

That same report said BetRivers is not restricting players to just one leaderboard, so grinders can chase both sets of prizes if they want. It also listed the Gold payouts at $1,400 for first and $150 for 20th, while the Silver board pays $400 to the winner and $10 to 25th.

In the run-up to the series, BetRivers is also running the Road to Multi-State Summer Series promotion from July 19 to Aug. 1. Pokerfuse said it awards 600 tournament tickets worth $10,000 in weekly draws, with entries tied to regular MTT play and added to accounts within 96 hours. The promotion ends Aug. 1, just before the series opens.

Greg Mueller reached the 2026 WSOP Main Event final table with a very different relationship to poker than he had in his earlier years on the circuit. The Canadian ex-hockey player, now a three-time WSOP bracelet winner, has said the daily grind stopped feeling fun, but he also said he committed “with my heart and soul” to this Main Event and believes he can still play.

He described poker as something that takes up too much time and keeps him in a chair too long. In one interview, he said that if golf or dinner comes up while he is playing cash games, he is happy to deal himself out, because he would rather be active than sit all day. He also said tournament life can feel like having a boss, with no easy way to leave the table.

That reset shows up off the felt, too. Poker.org reported that Mueller took up golf during COVID and that it became his passion. After returning home from Las Vegas, he said he has been sleeping more, exercising, eating cleaner and doing enough stairs, lifting and walking to lose about seven to eight pounds, mostly so he looks better on ESPN.

He even contrasted that with his old routine in Vegas, where he said he would sit on his ass for 14 hours a day, play poker and gain weight. He also said that after sessions he used to hit Johnny Rockets around 2 a.m. for a milkshake, fries, a burger and dessert that felt about like four Tums.

Mueller’s run to the final table has also been built on a series of big hands. He entered on Day 1d, doubled his stack within three levels after flopping a set and eliminating an opponent who turned two pair, then bagged 41st with 1,389 players still alive. By Day 6 he was comfortably inside the top half, helped by pocket kings and a timely fold with pocket jacks.

On Day 7, he cracked Ori Elul’s kings with ace-jack after flopping an ace. He then climbed from 19th place with 21 players left on Day 8, moving steadily up the counts.

The key hand came with 17 players remaining, when Mueller and France’s Romain Lewis got all the chips in preflop in an aces-versus-kings cooler. Poker.org said the blinds were 400K/800K, Lewis opened to 1.6 million, Mueller three-bet to 6 million, and Lewis shoved 10.6 million before Mueller snap-called with more than 23 million in the middle.

He also doubled through Rami Hammoud with jacks against nines, then survived another huge flip against Michael Gagliano when queens held against ace-king. After that one, Mueller called it his biggest flip ever and said it felt nice to be on the right side.

His Main Event path has been long. Mueller’s first WSOP cash came in 2003, and after returning in 2005 he cashed four times, including a ninth-place finish in the $5,000 Limit event. He won his first bracelet in 2009 in the World Championship of Limit Hold’em and added a second about two weeks later in the $1,500 Shootout.

He went on to post a runner-up finish in 2012 and two third-place finishes in 2013, then made the final table of the $50,000 Poker Players Championship in 2018. In 2019 he was openly wondering whether modern, math-driven poker had passed him by, before winning the $10,000 H.O.R.S.E. event and quieting those doubts.

The Review-Journal said Mueller, who lives in White Rock, British Columbia, played professional hockey in Germany from 1992 to 2000 before moving into poker. He still plays in an adult hockey league, remains part of the Vancouver Canucks alumni association, and says hockey and golf are still the activities he enjoys most.

When the Main Event finally got down to nine players, everyone remaining was guaranteed $750,000. The final table is set to begin Aug. 3 and will air live on ESPN2.

A $5 PokerStars Spin & Go in PokerNews’ report hit the ultra-rare 240,000x multiplier, creating a $1.2 million prize pool and turning Denmark’s dillerfar19 into a $1 million winner. The three players were dillerfar19, Belarus’s KuCoH and Brazil’s malakaio300, with payouts set at $80,000 for third, $120,000 for second and $1 million for first.

Spin & Go is a three-handed hyper-turbo format where the prize pool is picked before the first hand. Most $5 entries land in 2x or 3x prize pools, more than 87% of the time, while 2x to 5x is winner-takes-all, 10x pays the top two finishers, and 25x or more pays all three. The stated chance of the 240,000x hit was 0.10 in a million, and traditional Spin & Gos run at buy-ins of $0.50, $1, $2, $5, $10 and $25.

KuCoH was the first player eliminated. After malakaio300 moved all-in with jack-deuce, KuCoH called with king-seven, a deuce landed on the board, and the elimination locked in $120,000 for the two survivors. malakaio300 then carried a 2:1 chip lead into heads-up play.

The lead flipped when malakaio300 shoved pocket fives and dillerfar19 called with king-queen, then improved to trip kings. The chip lead changed hands again before dillerfar19 edged in front once more heading to the final hand.

In the last pot, malakaio300 moved all-in on the button with king-eight and dillerfar19 called with pocket sevens. A seven-high flop gave dillerfar19 a set, a jack on the turn left malakaio300 drawing dead, and another seven on the river made quads and sealed the $1 million top prize.

In a separate PokerListings report, Belarus-based Zherminal also turned a $5 Spin & Go into a $1 million score against derom01 and mari_farah15, with $120,000 for second and $80,000 for third. Zherminal became the 45th Spin & Go millionaire, and PokerStars is now planning to bring the format to live play at the first Spin & Go World Championship at EPT Prague from December 4 to December 15, with mystery prizes added back in and player feedback set to shape future versions and possible expansion to other EPT stops.

The Borgata Summer Poker Open $2,700 Championship has moved into its second of three starting flights after Day 1a left Lewis Esposito on top with 425,500 chips. The opening flight drew 89 entries and sent 24 players through to Day 2 at Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in Atlantic City.

Day 1a’s other biggest stacks were George St. Lawrence with 288,000, Eric Starker with 228,500, Colin Moll with 227,000 and Vittorio Abbate with 226,000. Abbate won his seat in a charity event in New York. Darren Elias finished with 79,000 and Brandon Mueller finished with 74,000.

The event is playing toward a $1 million guarantee. Each player starts with 40,000 chips, and each starting day runs 10 levels of 60 minutes. There are breaks after every two levels, plus a 75-minute dinner break at the end of Level 6.

The scheduling details were not perfectly aligned across the sources. PokerNews said the second flight was set to begin at 12:15 p.m. local time, while Borgata’s schedule PDF lists Day 1b for July 28 at 11:15 a.m. The same PDF lists Day 2 for July 29 at 11:15 a.m., while PokerNews put the Day 2 merge at noon.

The live coverage also noted that late registration remains open until the start of Day 2 and unlimited reentries are allowed through that point. It added that the series’ New Jersey history goes back to June 2008, when it ran with 14 tournaments, and pointed to a previous $2,700 Championship that drew 685 entries, built a $1,644,000 prize pool and saw Olivier Busquet win $255,135 after a heads-up deal with Abraham Gordon, with 87 spots paid.

Texas Card House’s WSOP page lists the next WSOP Circuit stop in Austin for Sept. 10-21.

Poker.org reported that the two-week festival will feature 50 tournaments, more than $4.1 million in guarantees, and 18 ring events. The showcase Main Event runs Sept. 17-21 and carries a $2 million guarantee.

The September series follows the Circuit’s first Texas stop at the same venue this spring, when WSOP.com said the first-ever WSOP Circuit series in Texas ran from April 23 to May 4. That debut also offered 18 opportunities to win WSOP Circuit gold and punch tickets to WSOP Paradise 2026 at Baha Mar Resort.

The spring Main Event had a $1,700 buy-in and a $1 million guarantee, but it drew 1,709 entries and produced a $2,589,135 prize pool. It paid 191 players and sent $231,165 to first place, more than doubling the guarantee.

PokerNews reported that the guarantee was beaten before registration closed during Flight C, and that the event had three Day 1 starting flights. The same coverage said the first Main Event kicked off on April 30.

The debut stop also produced other big numbers. Poker.org reported that a $600 Mini Main drew 2,562 entries for more than $1.3 million, while the First Lone Star Ring drew 901 entries at $400 apiece. The back half of that schedule also included a $600 Texas Stack, a $400 PLO Double Board Bomb Pot, and a $400 Last Lone Star Ring.

Texas Card House COO Victor Leone said the prize pool broke the biggest tournament record in Texas and that the room looked forward to breaking more records. Spectrum Local News also quoted Ryan Crow saying the cardroom expected closer to 80 tables for the Circuit series, compared with about 45 normally. Poker.org noted that the previous record for a $1,700 Main Event in Texas was the $2 million Texas Poker Championship at Prime Social Houston in 2022, won by James Carroll for $455,860.

A Poker Twitter row between Ethan “Rampage” Yau and Allen “Chainsaw” Kessler turned personal after Yau called Kessler “a cancer to this industry.” Kessler said the remark was completely inappropriate because his mother died from cancer.

The exchange started with Yau talking up his recent results, including his WSOP Online – Hybrid #16: $5K Championship win in June for $228,825 after beating Adrian Mateos heads-up. Yau said, “After beating the end boss, Adrian Mateos, and winning my second WSOP bracelet, I like my chances.”

TightPoker reported that Kessler answered, “You’re drawing dead versus a ton of notable players,” and Yau followed with a challenge for $100/$200 or higher heads-up over 100,000 hands. Kessler asked, “Sure in limit mixed format T.O.R.S.E.?” before saying he was not interested in heads-up no-limit and could line up several players who would play.

Kessler later told TightPoker the original post was “pure clickbait” and “a sham.” He said Yau eventually admitted it was not an open invitation to play him, and that there was no online challenge to begin with, only a marketing ploy.

He also said he had no interest in 100,000 online hands, which would take months to play out. Kessler said he was too busy for the nonsense and despised no-limit anyway.

PokerNews reported the same basic sequence, saying the insult sparked the row and that Kessler is a mixed-games specialist. SpadePoker.tv likewise described the exchange as playful banter that quickly turned into personal animosity and heads-up challenges.

The spat also drew reactions from other players. Matt Salsberg called Kessler “a National f**king Treasure,” and Shaun Deeb said that, for all the jabs Kessler gets, he at least did not get rich off supporters hustling them like others. Garry Gates posted an AI-made poster of Rampage and Chainsaw battling monsters, and Yau replied that it would be an honor to represent the community and knock some sense into him.

PokerNews said it is unlikely the two will ever battle heads-up because they specialize in different variants.

WCOOP 2026 will run from Sept. 6 to Sept. 30.

According to Pokerfuse’s The Rail, that will make it the 25th edition of the series.

Rickey Evans finished Day 1f of the $600 The Hendon Mob Mid-Major Championship at Thunder Valley Casino Resort with 740,000, good for the overall chip lead from the final starting flight. The flight drew 291 entries, and a double knockout meant 28 players advanced instead of the allotted 29.

The final flight left the tournament with a 111-player Day 2 field and a prize pool of $577,720. Players were chasing an $83,380 top prize.

Tzu Chiu bagged 646,000 for the second-biggest stack in the flight, while Anthony Murphy followed with 642,000. Victor Paredes also moved on with 468,000, the fifth-largest stack from Day 1f.

Evans still had not won an RGPS ring, and his best RunGood finish had come in 2023 when he placed 17th in the RGPS Checkpoint Graton Main Event. Murphy had already cashed in the Passport Season Finale with an 11th-place finish in the Far and Away 50K, and a victory here would have given him his first RGPS title and roughly doubled his live career earnings.

Paredes entered Day 2 with two RGPS rings already in the bag and was chasing a third. Dean Calilung and Justo Avalos were the last players out of Day 1f, and their exits brought the flight down to 28 survivors.

The tournament was part of the RunGood Poker Series Passport Season Finale in Lincoln, California, which runs from July 13 to August 3 with 20 ring events over 22 days and more than $2.3 million in guarantees. The broader schedule also included a $500,000-guaranteed Hendon Mob Mid-Major Championship, and The Hendon Mob had said the event’s second edition was meant to build on last year’s North America stop in the TV Poker Room, which drew 1,605 entries, generated an $834,600 prize pool and ended in an eight-way deal that gave Jagdeep Bal the title and $71,036.

Day 2 was scheduled to resume at 11 a.m. local time with 40-minute levels, and the final day was set to move to eight-handed play until the final table began at nine players.

After Ethan “Rampage” Yau tweeted that he was coming off a second WSOP bracelet and liked his chances, a heads-up challenge to Allen Kessler quickly slid into insults. Yau offered a $100/$200-or-higher no-limit hold’em match for 100,000 hands, while Kessler said he was not interested in NLH and only wanted mixed games.

Yau opened by calling Kessler “a cancer to this industry” and tying the challenge to his recent bracelet win. PokerNews reported that he also took a harsher personal shot at Kessler, saying he was a “whiny ass fart” who has “no backbone when push comes to shove.”

Kessler answered that Yau was “drawing dead” against “a ton of notable players.” He said he would be willing to play only if the challenge involved mixed games, and offered to line up several players who would accept the match.

Yau made clear he was not interested in the players Kessler suggested. He also said he was “just doing it for promotion,” which made the whole exchange look more like trash talk than a real booking.

The feud was set against Yau’s June victory in WSOP Online – Hybrid #16: $5K Championship, where he beat Adrian Mateos heads-up for $228,825. That event drew 226 entries and generated a $1.13 million prize pool, with the final table finishing live in the Paris Ballroom in Las Vegas after starting online.

Mateos had been 6-0 in WSOP bracelet heads-up matches with a bracelet on the line before losing to Yau. He had also won the $250,000 Super High Roller earlier in the series.

Yau’s bracelet run came after a huge livestream cash-game heater. PokerNews said he was on a seven-figure upswing, and Card Player reported more than $1.3 million in profits across three sessions, including a $676,000 pot against Michael “Texas Mike” Moncek.

Card Player also said Yau had more than half a million followers across Instagram and YouTube and over $4.9 million in recorded tournament earnings. The bracelet was his third-largest payday, behind a $894,240 score in a $25,000 high roller at the 2022 World Poker Tour World Championship and a $230,379 win in the 2021 MSPT Venetian main event.

Kessler’s resistance to the NLH challenge fit his own poker lane. He created The Chainsaw Mixed Series of Poker, and PokerNews said most of that series is non-hold’em, with some NLH events also on the schedule.

John Malczan took a big chip lead into the Borgata Summer Poker Open $500 Almighty Stack final table after Day 2 whittled a 2,209-entry field down to six players. He bagged 75,000,000 chips, and the final six had already locked up $23,075 apiece, with the champion set to earn $144,250.

According to PokerNews, Malczan was described as a general contractor from Trenton, New Jersey with nearly 50 tournament titles and $865,000 in live tournament earnings. His march to the top stack included a key hand against John Malvasio, where he made trips, and he closed the night by flopping top two pair to bust Toby Gafner in seventh place.

Day 2 began with 279 players back in the Borgata poker room, and the event played down to the final six from there. The final table was scheduled to start at noon local time, with 40-minute levels, 17 minutes left in Level 34, and blinds at 500,000/1,000,000 with a 1,000,000 big blind ante when action resumed.

Yuriy Kudrynskyy held the second-biggest stack at 57,500,000 after waking up with pocket aces to bust Michael Mann in a huge pot. He was also back for another shot at a title after finishing fourth in the $650 Super Deep 6-Max just a few days earlier.

William Shaw sat on 31,000,000 chips, with John Wilson close behind on 29,500,000. The short stacks were Baruch Fishman with 16,000,000 and Raymond Ferretti with 12,000,000.

The final table path also included a few notable knockouts. William Shaw ended Bin Weng’s run in 17th place after picking up two queens, while Daniel Lazrus fell in 22nd when Toby Gafner made a big call with two sevens and held against Lazrus’ flush draw.

Early exits included Li Liang in 274th, Matt Matros in 266th, Mukul Pahuja in 192nd, Randy Pisane in 118th, and Lingyu Zen in 112th. Will Failla, the WPT champion and start-of-day chip leader, made it to the final table before losing most of his chips to John Wilson and busting in eighth place shortly afterward.

Lewis Esposito finished Day 1a of the Borgata Summer Poker Open Championship on top, bagging 425,500 chips after the opening flight left 24 players surviving from 89 entries at Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in Atlantic City.

The $2,700 championship is the flagship event of the Borgata Summer Poker Open and is playing toward a $1 million guarantee. The opening flight ran through 10 levels of 60 minutes each.

According to PokerNews’ live coverage, Esposito’s run included a big scare. He was down to as little as 16,000 before getting away from an overpair against Gregory Bauer, then rebuilt his stack with a series of larger pots.

His biggest pot came in an all-in showdown against Robert Ozello, where Esposito flopped a set of nines and narrowly covered Ozello to send him out in the event’s largest pot so far. Esposito also eliminated Jordan Glazer late in the night to cement his lead.

George St. Lawrence was the closest player to Esposito on the overnight leaderboard. Vittorio Abbate finished fifth overall with 226,000 after winning his entry in a Poker4Life charity event in New York City last month.

Four women advanced from Day 1a. Xiaoqiong Liu led that group with 221,500, followed by Emily Sun with 165,000, Sharman Olshan with 65,500 and Kathy Saraf with 51,000.

Other notable stacks included Charles Hook with 114,000, Brandon Mueller with 74,000, Nicholas Funaro with 50,500 and BetMGM ambassador Darren Elias with 79,000 after using one bullet.

Two more starting flights are still to come, both set for 12:15 p.m. local time on the next two days. Players can also buy in before Day 2 on Wednesday, July 29, and PokerNews says it will continue live coverage until a winner is crowned on July 31.

Shiina Okamoto won the TWD 60,000 High Roller at the Taiwan Millions Tournament TMT20, taking TWD 594,000 after beating Eosoo Lee heads-up in a 25-entry event that built a TWD 1.3 million prize pool.

The Day 17 result, reported by SoMuchPoker, also put Chi Huang in third for TWD 224,400 and Chejui Chang in fourth for TWD 145,200. Okamoto collected the top payout as the field of 25 was trimmed to a four-way money finish.

The High Roller was played at Asia Poker Arena and Red Space. On the same day, the Main Event had moved through Day 1E and Day 1F with entries standing at 5,593, while Day 1G was set for 11:00 AM, Day 1H for 5:00 PM, and a new TWD 40,000 High Roller was due to begin at 1:00 PM.

A WSOP report said Okamoto won the $1,000 Ladies Event for the second straight year in 2025, earning $184,094 and her second bracelet. It also said she had finished second in the same event in 2023 and entered the 2025 final table with more than three times the chips of the next biggest stack.

The 2026 Borgata $2,700 Summer Poker Open Championship opens at Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in Atlantic City with a $1 million guaranteed prize pool and three starting flights set for July 26 through July 28. The first Day 1 heat starts at 12:15 p.m. local time.

According to PokerNews, the festival runs from July 16 through July 31 and carries more than $4 million in guarantees across no-limit hold’em, pot-limit Omaha, and mixed-game events. Its live reporting team will follow the championship from the first shuffle until a winner is crowned on July 31.

The championship gives every player 40,000 chips, including the voluntary add-on. Unlimited reentries are available during the first ten 60-minute levels, late registration stays open until the start of Day 2, and level lengths remain 60 minutes on Days 1 and 2 before stretching to 90 minutes on Day 3.

PokerNews also said it will cover six marquee events with chip counts, hand updates, photos, and winner interviews. That list includes the $600 Deep Stack Kick Off, $650 Pot-Limit Omaha Championship, $650 Super Deep 6-Max, $500 Borgata Almighty Stack, and $580 Monster Mirror Mystery Bounty.

BetMGM Poker’s blog said online qualifiers start at $10, and that seats come with cash for gas or other transportation, meals, and accommodations. It also said the live section of the BetMGM YouTube channel will include four cash game streams and numerous live final tables during the festival.

The opening $600 Deep Stack Kick Off has already produced a winner. Derek Childress beat a field of 2,390 and took $170,610 after a heads-up deal with Lingyu “Roger” Zen.

That opening event’s guarantee rose from $600,000 in 2025 to $1 million this year. Childress said he came in hoping for a min-cash, then made Day 2, reached the final table, and won the whole thing.

The series also has deeper New Jersey roots. The historical notes cited in the coverage reach back to June 2008, when the schedule had 14 tournaments. One archive example shows a $2,700 Championship drawing 685 entries, building a $1,644,000 prize pool, and ending with Olivier Busquet beating Abraham Gordon for $255,135; another $5,200 Championship drew 399 entries and paid Allen Bari $500,250.

Day 3 is set to play down to the final six if possible.

The RunGood Poker Series Season Finale $600 The Hendon Mob Mid-Major Championship at Thunder Valley Casino Resort reached its final starting flight with five of six flights complete. Those five flights had produced 820 total entries, and 82 players had already locked up Day 2 seats.

PokerNews’ live update said Day 1e finished the night before the report. The penultimate flight drew 161 entries and sent 16 players through, with Noah Workman leading the group on 1,042,000 chips. Workman was the only player to top seven figures in an opening flight so far. Henri Lopez advanced with 481,000, Christopher Rudd finished on 473,000, and Jeff Platt moved on with 330,000. It was the fourth time Platt had cashed in a RGPS The Hendon Mob Mid-Major Championship event.

Day 1f was set for 11 a.m. local time and was the last chance for players to book a seat in Day 2. Competitors began each starting flight with 30,000 chips, and blind levels were 30 minutes on Day 1 before stretching to 40 minutes on Day 2.

The event allowed one reentry per flight, and registration stayed open until the start of Level 9. The top 10% of each starting flight advanced to Day 2, while the top 12.5% finished in the money. Players who cashed without advancing received $1,100, and anyone qualifying more than once carried forward only their biggest stack, with the lower stack or stacks removed and paid out at the lowest Day 2 prize amount instead.

PokerNews said the championship carried a $500,000 guarantee and was being staged at Thunder Valley for the fourth year in a row. Last year’s winner was Sasha Sabbaghian, who took the title and $95,295. Day 2 was set to resume eight-handed, and the final table would be nine-handed.

Justin Lapka won Event #17, the $5,000 High Roller at Horseshoe Las Vegas, after outlasting David Peters heads-up for $108,189 and his fourth WSOP Circuit ring. The event drew 83 entries, and Peters finished second for $71,624.

The path to the title was anything but smooth. With five players left, Lapka had nearly half the chips in play and looked set for a comfortable march to ring No. 4, according to the reporting. Then he five-bet shoved A-9 into Peters’ A-K and got snapped off, which sent him tumbling to about 16 big blinds.

Lapka described that moment as looking like “doomsday for a minute,” but he said he still believed he could win even when he had no chips and “no odds.” He said his way of playing poker is to keep pressing forward and keep hope alive.

He did just that. Lapka worked through the other short stacks as Keun Kwak and Brandon Wilson fell, then picked up a huge double in a three-player pot against Peters. In that hand, Lapka’s A-Q was ahead of Peters’ A-J, the board ran K-J-J, and a ten on the river gave Lapka a straight and a loud celebration.

After that double, Lapka was down to 30 seconds per decision because he had burned through his time extensions. He said the comeback felt like a roller coaster, and he also said the experience reinforced the value of faith and not letting earlier hands stick in his head.

Lapka later won back the chip lead in another big pot when both players were running on empty for time banks. At the 20,000/40,000/40,000 level, he called Peters’ three-bet, faced a flop bet and turn call, then shoved 715,000 on the river after Peters checked; Peters burned his last two time extensions before calling, only to find Lapka holding pocket aces.

The final heads-up stretch stayed tense with both players out of extensions. At the 25,000/50,000/50,000 level, Lapka finally got the last word when Peters used his full shot clock before calling, and Lapka tabled a pair of jacks to deny Peters his fifth WSOP Circuit ring just weeks after Peters had won bracelet number five.

SpadePoker’s final table rundown also showed Walter Fisher in third for $47,292, Brandon Wilson fourth for $33,202 and Keun Kwak fifth for $24,315. Lapka said he was living his dream after the win and that he might go to The Bahamas this year, where the package from the victory could send him.

Matthew Blagg won the WSOP Circuit Horseshoe Las Vegas $1,700 Main Event for his first live tournament title and his first gold ring. He outlasted a field of 936 entries and beat Eric Yanovsky heads-up to finish the run.

Coverage did not agree on the exact top-end numbers. Card Player listed Blagg’s first prize at $238,470 from a $1,418,040 prize pool, while Poker.org and SSBCrack put the win at $238,870. Spadepoker.tv also differed on the pool, reporting $1,298,780.

Blagg arrived at the final table as an online specialist with no previous live title. Before this result, his top recorded score was a third-place finish in a $333 WSOP Online bracelet event for $47,039, and SSBCrack said his previous live best was $30,100 for 14th in The Colossus earlier this summer.

The win came during a busy stretch at Horseshoe Las Vegas. According to Pokerology, the Circuit stop ran July 14 through 25 and filled the gap after the bracelet series ended, before the Main Event final table airs on ESPN from Aug. 3 to 5.

Blagg said he got going from a rough spot on Day 1B, when he had less than starting stack at dinner break and then “just caught fire from there.” One key hand had him all in pre-flop with ace-king against pocket kings, queens and jacks, and the board came four hearts to give him the nut flush. He later quadrupled his stack to 4.5 million and moved into the final table in fourth place.

The final table swung quickly. Jingyang He doubled early with pocket kings against Philip Lucia’s queens, then sent Lucia out in ninth place for $18,860. Blagg later doubled through He with pocket jacks, and four-handed he picked up a huge pot with pocket aces against Yanovsky to move near the top.

Yanovsky answered right back when Jia Chi Li shoved pocket sixes into his kings, which sent Li out in fourth for $79,920. Blagg then sent Daniel Lei to the rail in third for $111,880 with pocket aces holding against flush and straight draws, setting up heads-up play with Yanovsky.

The match for the title went back and forth for nearly an hour. Blagg said he knew Yanovsky was very good and that he was trying not to make any huge mistakes, and he also explained that he had to adjust to the bigger live ante structure once he realized there was more money in the pot heads-up. In one big hand, he check-raised, then shoved about nine million effective on the river and got a fold to take back the lead.

The last hand finished when Yanovsky moved in with 8♠2♠ on a 7♦5♣4♣9♠ board and Blagg called with 4♠4♥. The J♦ on the river did not change anything, locking up the title for Blagg.

Yanovsky finished second for $159,040, and Card Player said his career earnings were now nearly $2 million. The rest of the final table paid Jack Duong $57,980 for fifth, Jingyang He $42,740 for sixth and Shawn Daniels $32,010 for seventh, while Card Player also noted deep runs from David ODB Baker, Matthew Wantman, Jason Wheeler, Weiran Pu, Justin Lapka, Mike Holtz and Giuseppe Pantaleo.

Mark Davis died unexpectedly on Saturday at 46. The Alabama native had more than $2.3 million in live tournament cashes, along with a resume anchored by a World Poker Tour title and three WSOP Circuit rings.

According to PokerNews, the Gulf Coast Poker community was mourning his passing. Davis was described as a mainstay and familiar face in card rooms including Choctaw in Oklahoma and Harrah’s Cherokee in North Carolina, and Michael Graydon wrote on Facebook that the two grew up playing poker together in an old limo shop. Graydon also said Davis “was fierce at the tables but had a huge heart and was there for people when they needed him.”

Davis’s signature result came in 2022 at the $3,500 WPT Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown. He beat a field of 2,010 entries to win $1,000,300, denying Darren Elias a record-extending fifth WPT title after the final table reconvened in Las Vegas at HyperX Esports Arena inside Luxor following a six-week break.

Elias started that final table as chip leader, while Davis began second in chips. The heads-up match ran for about 100 hands, and CardPlayer said Davis eventually pulled ahead after calling a bluff with king-high before finishing the job a few hands later.

There is also a small prize note discrepancy in the reporting. PokerNews’s 2026 obituary described the win as a career-best $1,000,000 score, while its 2022 event report and CardPlayer put the top prize at $1,000,300.

Before that WPT win, Davis had $730,167 in live earnings, and his previous career best was $334,678 from winning the WSOP Circuit Cherokee Main Event at Harrah’s Cherokee. WSOP.com said that event drew 1,402 entries, generated a $2,124,030 prize pool, and earned Davis his first gold ring.

The Cherokee victory also sent him to the Tournament of Champions freeroll in Las Vegas that summer. WSOP.com said Davis started Day 2 with 123,000 chips, had to adjust because he usually preferred a bigger stack, and then beat Adam Ney in a heads-up match that lasted more than two hours.

PokerNews also reported that Davis last cashed just over a week before his death, taking 68th place for $652 in the $400 No-Limit Hold’em Mini Main Event at the Gulf Coast Poker Mid-South Mini-Series in Tunica, Mississippi. The same report said he suffered a stroke and was airlifted to the hospital, where he suffered additional strokes.