888poker’s 2026 WSOP Main Event docuseries has reached Part 3, and this chapter leans into a rare quiet spell between tournament days. The five Team888 ambassadors spend their day off sightseeing, playing games, shopping and talking about what the Main Event could mean if one of them runs deep.

As reported last week, Episode 2 ended with Ian Simpson busting while Aaron Barone, Nick Eastwood, Lucia Navarro and Vivian Saliba bagged their stacks for Day 2. According to PokerNews, with Day 2 still a couple of days away, Part 3 follows the group as they try to reset before the grind starts again.

Barone and Eastwood open the episode on Fremont Street in Downtown Las Vegas. Barone says he had never been there before, then tries to get Eastwood to wear a garish hat on Day 2 by offering him $88 and raising the bid when he refuses. Simpson spends his break at the Pinball Hall of Fame, which has around 700 pinball machines plus other arcade games.

The episode also turns into a small wager between Barone and Eastwood. They set up a three-game challenge where the loser has to pay for dinner, and Barone jokes that he is excited for a free meal. Eastwood then wins the first two games, which flips the challenge back on him.

Navarro gets a different kind of downtime. She says she usually eats out far too often when she is in Las Vegas, so she uses her day off to shop for groceries, then imagines what she would do with the $10 million first-place prize. Her answer stays grounded: she would take a trip with her family, maybe help out relatives, and avoid doing anything too crazy because she has made a lot of mistakes in the past. She also says she has learned that money has to be invested to create passive income, and that her lifestyle would not change much, though she would still have some fun times.

The episode closes with Saliba, who says she feels great after spending the afternoon at the pool, going to the gym, eating good food and sleeping late. She ends the chapter looking forward to seeing fireworks and July 4 celebrations in Las Vegas.

Spain’s Daniel Vicente won his first WSOP bracelet by taking down GGPoker’s $1,000 Mystery Bounty Pot-Limit Omaha event online. He beat Renan Bruschi heads-up and collected $99,441 plus a $30,000 Super Pass for the 2026 WSOP Paradise Super Main Event.

PokerNews said Vicente had already come close to a bracelet in Las Vegas in 2025, when he finished runner-up to Sam Soverel in the $10,000 No-Limit Hold’em 6-Handed Championship. As reported on Aug. 17, Brazilian Raphael Caixeta had already opened WSOP Online 2026 with the first bracelet, and Vicente followed with the next one.

The mystery bounty event drew 771 entries and built a $732,450 prize pool. By the end of Day 1, the field was down to 12, and most of the biggest mystery bounties had already been claimed, including one worth $91,000.

Day 2 knocked out Simon Mattsson, Diego Zeiter, Lex Veldhuis and Dimitrios Michailidis. China’s Alex Zev entered the day with the chip lead, but he went out in eighth and burst the final-table bubble.

At the final table, Eduardo “Scanner-” Bernal was first to go for $10,651. Matheus Grazziotin took sixth for $29,681, “Mger_Aleksani” of Armenia finished fifth for $31,638, MACHINAA of Taiwan was fourth for $22,862, and BBHDAMT7angels finished third for $32,868 before Vicente closed out Bruschi heads-up.

PokerNews also noted that the next bracelet in the series was set to be decided on Aug. 22 in the $100 Flip & Go NLH, with the GO stage scheduled for 7 p.m. BST after 9,939 buy-ins had already been logged.

WSOP Online has launched a Summer Gift Drop for cash-game players, a late-August promotion that runs from Aug. 23 through Aug. 30. The offer is live only at cash tables and is open to players in New Jersey, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania through the shared liquidity pool.

As covered earlier this month, WSOP Online has already been busy with the Circuit series, a Sunday Sale and the exclusive $100,000 Multi-Flight Event, and this new drop keeps the operator’s summer promo run going into the final week of August. The company is presenting it as a last chance for players to pick up extra value this month.

According to Pokerfuse, Summer Gifts are awarded at random across WSOP cash games. The prizes are mystery items, with tournament tickets and BLAST entry tickets among the rewards.

Only cash-game play counts for this promotion. MTTs, SNGs, BLAST, SNAP and other non-cash formats do not qualify, and players must sign up with WSOP Online and play cash games on their account at some point during the promotional window to be eligible.

The exact prize details are still being kept under wraps. For new players, WSOP’s welcome bonus can be layered on top of the promo, with a minimum first deposit of $10, a full deposit match up to $1,000 and up to $100 in extra free play depending on the size of the initial deposit.

A player who deposits $1,000 would get the full $1,000 match plus $100 in free play, for $1,100 in extra value before their first hand. Existing players, meanwhile, no longer have August reload bonuses available, though reload offers are expected to return soon.

The PokerStars Open Main Event at EPT Barcelona has reached its eight-handed final table, and Han Feng will begin it with the biggest stack and the €731,000 first-place prize in view. The €1,650 event drew 4,333 entries and generated a €6,239,520 prize pool after eight Day 1 flights and two full days of in-the-money play. Earlier coverage put the 2025 edition at 5,035 or 5,036 entries and a €7.25 million prize pool.

As reported in our Aug. 21 update, Feng had already taken the lead into Day 3 with 5.1 million chips. He is fresh off a fifth-place finish in the 2026 World Series of Poker Main Event for $2,250,000, and he more than sextupled his stack on Day 3 to finish on 33.3 million.

Gregoire Jarry is the nearest challenger with 28.8 million, while Jason Wheeler sits third on 19.2 million. Darko Svesko holds 13.3 million, Selvakumaran Mahersh 11.6 million, Bogdan-Petru Petrascu 11 million, Alexander Ivarsson 10.3 million and Felipe Boianovsky 5.3 million.

The Day 3 run also paid out several familiar names. Brock Wilson and Jamie Dwan both finished in the 20s for €20,530 apiece, Dominik Panka was 41st for €13,480, PokerStars Ambassador Sebastian Huber placed 60th for €11,710, and Victoria Livschitz went out 80th for €10,200. Play resumes in Barcelona on Saturday at 12:30pm local time, and pokerexklusiv said official streams are due to start on Aug. 23.

BCPoker launched a limited-time 200% Rakeback Rush that runs from Aug. 21 to Aug. 27 and doubles VIP Points for cash-game players. The promotion is aimed at moving players through the VIP ladder faster so they can reach higher rakeback tiers sooner.

PokerStrategy described the offer as an extra value play for cash-game grinders. The site’s VIP Program pays between 10% and 50% rakeback, so the appeal of the promo is not just the short-term points boost, but the chance to convert a week of volume into a better long-term tier.

As covered in our Aug. 1 report on the desktop client and cash-game rewards overhaul, this is the latest step in BCPoker’s push to make the cash-game side of the site more attractive. That earlier update added new cash-game rewards, a redesigned Spin & Go format, CLUBS, and the Telegram Mini-App.

PokerStrategy also said BCPoker is continuing to sharpen its offer for serious grinders with faster software and lower rake caps across key formats. Separate coverage by GipsyTeam said cash games are charged a flat 5% rake, while May changes cut the NL200 cap from $10 to $3 and reduced the NL400 and NL1000 caps by 63%.

BCPoker is also putting fresh emphasis on Pot-Limit Omaha with a PLO Daily Sprint that runs from Aug. 22 to Sept. 29. The daily leaderboard hands out a share of a $100 prize pool to the top five players each day.

Alex Foxen now leads the 2026 Global Poker Index Player of the Year standings and sits just 18 points behind Brandon Wilson in Card Player’s race, according to ACR Poker’s site. In GPI, Foxen has 4,480.04 points to Tony “Ren” Lin’s 4,321.52, a 158.52-point edge built from his best 13 qualifying open-event results.

The Card Player table is tighter. Wilson has 7,127 points, Foxen has 7,109, and Jesse Lonis is third with 6,481. ACR Poker notes that Card Player scores depend on finishing position, buy-in and field size, while GPI scores are drawn from a player’s top 13 results, so one late run can still reshape either race.

Foxen’s 2026 résumé includes five titles, 12 final tables and $4,229,256 in POY-qualified winnings. His wins came at PGT Last Chance Event #6 for $232,400, MSPT Poker Bowl X for $165,235, Triton Jeju’s $75,000 Pot-Limit Omaha 6-Max for $1.26 million, U.S. Poker Open Event #7 for $210,000 and the WSOP $10,000 Super Turbo Bounty for $594,246 and his fourth bracelet.

That WSOP score capped a summer that also produced 14 cashes and $2,067,005 in listed payouts. It came after a fourth-place finish in the $25,000 Heads-Up Championship for $300,000, a sixth in the $100,000 High Roller for $522,347, a seventh in the $25,000 Pot-Limit Omaha High Roller for $267,993 and a fifth in the $10,000 8-Game Championship for $94,730. Foxen joined ACR Poker on May 28 with Chance Kornuth and Chris Hunichen, and four of those five qualifying wins were already on the board before the roster move. As covered earlier in August, Foxen was already having a huge summer before this standings update.

If the season ended now, Foxen would collect a third GPI Player of the Year title, after back-to-back wins in 2018 and 2019. He is still chasing his first Card Player POY award, despite finishing third in 2018 and 2025, second in 2019, and fourth in 2021 and 2022.

The RGPS Golden Expedition Dallas $600 Main Event at Palace Poker is moving into its next wave today, with three more starting flights on the schedule after an opening day that drew nearly 200 entries across the first two flights. The tournament already has 24 players bagged for Day 2, and the field is still building toward the weekend finish.

According to PokerNews, Mauricio Miranda still sits in the early lead after winning Day 1a with 992,000 chips. He got there by bursting the bubble and closing out the night with the final pot, while Zachary Baron is right behind him with 974,000 after also making a deep run.

Day 1c begins at 11 a.m. local time, Day 1d starts at 5 p.m., and the turbo Day 1e is set for 10 p.m. All three flights begin with 60,000 chips, 100/200 blinds, and a 200 big blind ante. The first two flights use 30-minute levels, while the turbo flight runs 15-minute levels until only 12.5% of the field remains.

Registration stays open until the start of Level 9, and players can reenter as many times as they want before that cutoff. If a player bags more than once, the biggest stack carries forward to Day 2 and any extra bag is paid at the minimum Day 2 payout.

The Main Event carries a $200,000 guarantee and is part of the RunGood Poker Series’ Golden Expedition stop at Palace Poker, which runs from Aug. 13-23. The series returns to the club after the Passport Season stop there ended in March, and the Main Event is set to keep running through Saturday before survivors combine the following day to play for the title and the first Main Event ring of the new season.

RunGood Poker Series will take the RGPS Golden Expedition to Caesars New Orleans from Sept. 3-13, with 14 ring events and $330,000 in guarantees.

PokerNews will live report the $800 Main Event, which carries a $200,000 guarantee and begins Sept. 11 with the first of four starting flights before playing to a winner on Sept. 13. The opening Series Kickoff is a $400 two-day event with a $100,000 guarantee and five starting flights.

RunGood’s posted schedule also shows the Main Event flights stretching through Sept. 12, with the restart set for Sept. 13. The final day is not just for the championship, either, since the series also closes with the $400 Black Chip Bounty and the $200 Sendoff Turbo NLH.

The rest of the schedule leans into the usual mix of side events. The New Orleans stop includes a $200 Tag Team event, a $250 Seniors Event, a $300 Ladies event, a $300 Big Stack NLH ring event, and a $400 Pot-Limit Omaha event for mixed-game players.

As covered earlier, RunGood returned to New Orleans last year for the first time since 2015. That comeback stop drew 307 runners in the $800 Main Event and generated a $200,000 prize pool.

Jeremy Gaubert went on to win that event for $45,897, beating Zackary Poll heads-up to earn his first RunGood ring. The final table also included Brian Senie in third for $22,343, Charles Bartlett in fourth for $16,547, and Ronald Inman in fifth for $12,431.

PokerStars has published the full schedule for the 25th World Championship of Online Poker, and the September series is now set at 350 tournaments running from Sept. 6 through Sept. 30. The slate carries $40 million in guarantees, includes six Main Events with $6.5 million in combined guarantees, and every winner will receive a trophy.

As reported yesterday, PokerStars had already set the dates and said the full slate would follow in the coming weeks. Poker.org describes WCOOP as PokerStars’ annual World Championship of Online Poker, first played in 2002, and says this year’s edition spans 121 different events. It also says 10 of the tournaments are branded World Championship events, and most events are offered at three buy-in levels.

The flagship championships are split between no-limit hold’em and pot-limit Omaha. Poker.org says the NLH and PLO Main Events are each available in Low, Medium and High versions, priced at $109, $1,050 and $10,300. The NLH trio starts Sept. 27 with guarantees of $1.25 million, $2 million and $2.5 million, while the PLO versions start Sept. 28 and carry guarantees of $100,000, $250,000 and $400,000.

PokerNews says the wider festival will cover formats including No-Limit Hold’em, Pot-Limit Omaha, 8-Game, HORSE, Progressive Knockout, Mystery Bounty and Triple Draw, and that six Main Events will award more than $6.5 million in guaranteed prize money on Sept. 27 and 28. The site also says PokerStars is adding satellites from $0.55, WCOOP-themed Spin & Go events from $0.75, $500,000 in tournament tickets through Lucky Dip, more than $175,000 in ticket bundles and Main Event entries through Power Path Express, and an extra $100,000 across the WCOOP Leaderboards. Steve Clarricoats, PokerStars associate director of online scheduling, told PokerNews that a WCOOP victory is a piece of poker history and that every champion joins an exclusive group of players who have conquered one of the toughest online tournament series in the world.

Shinichiro Kano led the APT Incheon Main Event into Day 4 with 3,050,000 chips, giving him the top spot as 47 players returned at Paradise City Casino Resort. Zhentao Long sat second with 2,965,000 and Yoko Sasaki was third on 2,580,000, so the top of the counts was tight even before the field got much smaller.

Spadepoker’s stack analysis said the event had reached 1,393 entries and a prize pool of KRW 3,008,540,000. It described that total as the largest international tournament the city had ever hosted, and noted that the average stack had been climbing fast while the field narrowed.

The payout structure is why those chip counts mattered. First place was worth $374,085 and second was worth $214,120, a drop of more than $159,000 for finishing one spot lower. The final table guaranteed at least KRW 38,580,000, while 10th and 11th both paid KRW 32,230,000, which made the fight around the bubble especially sharp.

As covered in our Aug. 8 report on the Korea National Cup, APT Incheon was already producing record numbers before the Main Event reached this stage. With 47 players left, the field still had 38 eliminations to go before it could reach the nine-handed final table.

The €100,000 EPT Super High Roller is now underway at Casino Barcelona. PokerNews’ event page says Day 1 is in progress and that it will not run full live reporting for the tournament, but will post key updates on chip counts, entries and prize-pool figures.

The 2026 PokerStars EPT Barcelona festival runs through Aug. 29 and features more than 60 trophy events across a wide range of buy-ins.

The rest of the schedule is still lining up around it. The €5,300 EPT Main Event is due to begin on Aug. 22, and from Aug. 23 seven days of live broadcasts are slated to bring card-exposed coverage from both the Super High Roller and the Main Event.

PokerNews described the festival as being only a couple of days in when multiple champions had already been crowned. Elias Suhonen took the largest share of a €310,000 prize pool in a €10,200 no-limit hold’em event and finished with €114,200.

Mauricio Miranda led Day 1a of the RGPS Golden Expedition Dallas $600 Main Event after bursting the bubble and finishing with 992,000 chips at Palace Poker. Halit Ozaltun was second with 890,000, and the opening flight sent 12 players on to Day 2 in the money.

According to PokerNews, the first of eight opening flights drew 100 entries and played all the way to Level 20 before the bags came out. As covered earlier this month, the series returned to Palace Poker after a stop in the Passport Season came to a close in March. The event carries a $200,000 guarantee, starts players with 60,000 chips, and allows unlimited reentry across the eight opening flights.

Hand-for-hand play dragged on for more than two full levels near the bubble. David Poblacion survived the stone bubble with 239,000 chips, and Miranda then won the final-bubble hand against Dora Coyle to end the night. The showdown was A♠J♥ for Coyle against A♦K♦ for Miranda, and Miranda improved on the runout to send Coyle out.

Nikola Mircetic finished third with 766,000, Jackson Morisey bagged 623,000, and Paul Taskalos rounded out the top five with 532,000. Morisey was the only other player to finish above ten starting stacks, while Taskalos’ surge came after a big river call with top pair a few levels earlier.

The field also included two RGPS Ambassadors, but neither made the money. Alexandra Loveless made an early run with pocket queens before fading after late registration closed, Bart Bogard joined the field and was eliminated, and defending Dallas champion Daniel Lowery took two shots before running top pair into Michael McBarron’s set of sixes. The tournament continues Friday with Day 1c, and six more flights were still to be played this weekend.

Han Feng took the chip lead into Day 3 of the PokerStars Open Main Event in Barcelona, with the €1,650 event down to 80 players from a starting field of 4,333 entries. Alexander Ivarsson was the nearest player in the counts as the tournament moved into its next stage.

As covered in our Aug. 5 report on his fifth-place WSOP Main Event finish, Feng already had a $2.25 million score on his résumé before this run. He bagged 5.1 million chips for Day 3, which put him in front of a field that had already been pared down sharply during Day 2.

According to PokerOrg, all eight Day 1 flights were complete before Day 2 began, and only 648 players advanced to lock up a minimum cash. The same reporting said the official prize pool landed at €6,239,520, below last year’s 5,036-entry, €7,251,840 edition. F5 Poker matched those totals and also noted that PokerStars had added a €2,200 In the Money at 180,000 side event to the Barcelona festival.

Several familiar names were still around but in need of chips. Jamie Dwan, who started Day 2 with one of the bigger stacks, finished 45th on 1.2 million. Brock Wilson sat 50th with 1.1 million, Dominik Panka had 805,000, Sebastian Huber 735,000, and Victoria Livschitz was down to 300,000. Feng and those five players were the remaining Pick 3 draft choices in the event. Day 3 gets under way Friday at 11am local time, and the PokerStars Open champion is due on Saturday, the same day the EPT Barcelona Main Event begins.

The RGPS Golden Expedition Southern Indiana $800 Main Event begins at Caesars Southern Indiana at 6 p.m. local time, with a $200,000 guaranteed prize pool and four starting flights on the schedule. Day 1a is the first flight, and the remaining entries are set for Aug. 21 at 6 p.m., Aug. 22 at 11 a.m., and Aug. 22 at 6 p.m., before Day 2 on Aug. 23 at 1 p.m. plays down to a champion.

Players start with 30,000 chips, and the opening flights use 30-minute levels. Late registration stays open until the start of Level 9, and unlimited reentries are allowed during that period, which gives players a long runway to jump in or fire again.

As covered last week, PokerNews brought back its PowerStack leaderboard for the fall season, and Southern Indiana is one of the first stops where players can start building points. This is also a return trip to the room after April, when Jasper May beat a 321-player field to win $47,787. RunGood ambassadors Craig Welko and Chris Audrain, along with WSOP bracelet winner Ronnie Day, also cashed in that event.

RunGood's own announcement frames Golden Expedition as a season-long trip across North America and the Caribbean, with president Tana Karn calling it "one continuous adventure." The route is set to end at the Dream Factory Festival at Thunder Valley Casino Resort in Lincoln, California, from Nov. 27 through Dec. 3, where two invitational tournaments are reserved for 2026 RunGood ring winners.

Nik Airball was already needling Daniel Negreanu more than a week before the poker legend’s Hustler Casino Live debut. Airball told PokerNews he expects Negreanu to “nit it up and survive, or play some hands and die” when the Canadian sits in the $100/$200 game.

As reported on Aug. 18, Hustler Casino Live had already set Negreanu’s first appearance for Aug. 28 in a $100/$200 no-limit hold’em cash game with a $50,000 minimum buy-in. At that point, the rest of the lineup had not been announced, and Negreanu was the only player confirmed for the table.

PokerNews describes Airball as the “King of LA” and a regular on Hustler Casino Live, and says he is almost exclusively a high-stakes cash game player. The site also calls him the winningest player in HCL history, and notes that he has taken shots at tournament grinders before, including a February post in which he said, “tourney players all suck, this is free money if I ever seen it!”

Negreanu’s return is drawing attention because he is one of poker’s biggest names and an eight-time WSOP bracelet winner. PokerNews says he is fresh off a strong 2026 World Series of Poker and has mostly lived on the tournament circuit for years, with only occasional detours into cash games. PokerStrategy added that he was stepping back into the cash-game arena for the first time in two years after his appearance on No Gamble, No Future, where he dropped an $83,600 pot when ace-queen ran into Phil Hellmuth’s pocket aces.

The hype around the debut has also been visible on HCL itself. PokerNews reports that Hustler Casino Live’s X announcement introduced Negreanu as a “poker legend” and GGPoker ambassador, with an AI-generated video that HCL regulars sang over, and that Negreanu shared the clip and called it “sooooo ridiculous.”

The $200,000 Triton Invitational will make its Asian debut at Super High Roller Series Jeju II in Jeju, South Korea, running Sept. 12-14 at Les A Casino.

According to Triton’s announcement, the Invitational sits inside the broader Jeju stop that runs Sept. 4-17, and the weekend timing is meant to fit traveling businesspeople. The event is built around a curated field, with invitees paired with a poker professional of their choice, the two groups playing separately on Day 1 before the field merges later in the tournament.

As covered in our Aug. 16 report, the wider Asian schedule was already pointing toward Jeju, and Triton is now adding its own marquee weekend to that run. Triton says 18 pairings are already confirmed for Jeju II, with more still to come.

The current list includes Paul Phua and Phil Ivey, Bryn Kenney and Leonardo Drago, and Ethan Yau and Justin Saliba. Other confirmed names already on the board include Tony Ren Lin, Mehdi Chaoui, Jules Dickerson, Isaac Haxton, Artur Martirosian, Seth Davies, Ben Heath, Danny Tang and Kayhan Mokri.

Triton is also leaning on the Invitational’s recent history to frame the stop. It says four of the previous 10 editions were won by invitees, including Aaron Zang, Ramin Hajiyev, Aleksa Pavicevic and Alejandro Lococo, while six went to the pros’ side. The current runner record for the format is 137 entries from Montenegro in May, when Adrian Mateos won $6.37 million.

The Jeju push comes with some meaningful local context, too. Triton says its previous visits to Jeju have been especially popular, and that its 12 biggest tournaments by field size have all taken place in South Korea. In 2025, the tour drew 391 entries to a $25,000 no-limit hold’em event in Jeju and 285 entries to the $100,000 Main Event at the casino now known as LES A.

On the Jeju II schedule, the Invitational is listed with a 300,000-chip starting stack and 50-minute levels, with registration closing at 12 p.m. on Day 2.

Klemens Roiter won the €25,000 no-limit hold’em title at EPT Barcelona after a heads-up deal with Ottomar Ladva. Ladva finished as the official runner-up, but the split gave him the larger deal-adjusted payout.

The festival is running at Casino Barcelona from Aug. 16-29. The €25,000 event drew 39 entries and built a €936,390 prize pool, with the top six spots paid. The posted first-place prize before the deal was €323,090.

PokerExklusiv reported the euro figures as €266,030 for Roiter and €267,760 for Ladva. CardPlayer reported the same result in dollars, with Roiter taking $308,595 and Ladva $310,602. The CardPlayer report also said the event was the first of several €25,000 buy-in tournaments on the festival schedule, and that Ladva had reached heads-up after backing up a second-place finish from the previous day in an earlier event.

That same report described Ladva as being in the middle of a career year. It said he had recorded four of the five biggest scores of his live career in 2026, including a $1.15 million win in February at the Onyx High Roller Series and a €100,000 high roller victory at EPT Paris worth $1,145,686.

For Roiter, the Barcelona result was his first title and his 11th final-table finish of 2026. After the win, he sat 15th in the PokerGO-style Player of the Year points race presented by CoinPoker. Ladva’s career haul stood at nearly $7.4 million after the result.

Caesars Virginia will host the first World Series of Poker Circuit stop ever held in Virginia, with the series set for Sept. 3-14 in Danville at the Pantheon. The festival includes 18 official WSOP Circuit ring events and more than $1.5 million in guaranteed prize pools.

The main championship event runs Sept. 10-14 and carries a $1,700 buy-in and a $500,000 guarantee. The official WSOP event page lists three starting flights for the Main Event and shows the festival topping out with an Event #18 $400 no-limit hold’em Double Stack Closer with a $25,000 guarantee.

Beyond the ring events, players will also have daily side tournaments, cash games and satellite chances throughout the series. Registration is being handled through WSOP LIVE, which Caesars describes as the exclusive sign-up platform for the Caesars Virginia stop, and the app is set to provide seating assignments, chip counts, prize-pool updates and player notifications in real time. Participants must be 21 or older.

The resort opened Dec. 12, 2024, as a 587,000-square-foot property with more than 90,000 square feet of gaming space, nearly 1,500 slots, 79 live-action table games and 48 electronic table games. The release also said the property includes a WSOP poker room, a Caesars Sportsbook, a 320-room hotel tower and 50,000 square feet of meeting and convention space that serves as a 2,500-seat live entertainment venue.

Caesars’ release said the property is owned in partnership with Caesars Entertainment and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. Chris Albrecht, Caesars Virginia’s senior vice president and general manager, said hosting the circuit event strengthens the property’s position for poker players and fans.

WSOP Paradise 2026 is set for December 2 through December 18 at Baha Mar in the Bahamas, with 20 bracelet events and $120 million in guarantees. The festival is also billed as the final major WSOP bracelet series of the year, so it will settle the 2026 Player of the Year race. The headline events are a $25,000 Super Main Event with a $50 million guarantee and a $10,000 GGMillion$ No Limit Hold’em Championship with $20 million in guaranteed prizes, according to Pokerfuse’s schedule release.

The rest of the lineup mixes familiar Paradise staples with new formats. Buy-ins start at $2,500 and rise as high as $250,000 for the WSOP Invitational, while the schedule adds mixed games, mixed PLO/NLH, and bomb pot events. The 2026 edition will not include the Triton partnership that featured several events in the previous two years.

As covered in June, WSOP had already said it would bring Solana buy-ins to the series and extend the crypto option to Paradise. The Bahamas festival will add Solana for both buy-ins and cashouts for the first time in the series, while PokerNews noted that Solana handled $23 million in payments during the 2026 WSOP in Las Vegas, about 6% of all buy-ins.

PokerNews identified Event #1 as Circuit Championship Mystery Bounty NLH, beginning December 2 with a $2,500 buy-in and a $5 million guarantee.

The bigger-ticket travel offers are back too. The $100,000 Paradise Package includes a 16-night stay at Baha Mar from December 2 through December 18 in a Deluxe Room, requires at least $100,000 in tournament buy-ins, and asks players to enter both GGMillion$ Day 1A and Super Main Event Day 1A. A $5,000 deposit is due by October 31.

The $300,000 VIP Package pushes the buy-in commitment to $300,000, adds a 16-night suite stay, and includes VIP fast-track arrival service, round-trip SUV transfers, and complimentary buffet access. It also requires players to play both GGMillion$ Day 1A and Super Main Event Day 1A, with a $10,000 deposit due by October 31.

The 2026 edition is the fourth WSOP Paradise after debuting in 2023 with 15 bracelet events and $50 million in guarantees. Last year’s Super Main Event drew 2,891 entries and produced a $72,275,000 prize pool, well above the then-$60 million guarantee, with Bernhard Binder beating Jean-Noel Thorel heads-up. Daily WSOP Paradise action is scheduled to stream from December 5 at 3 p.m. ET on the official WSOP YouTube channel.

CoinPoker has lined up four CoinMillion tournaments for every Sunday in September as part of the Global Online Poker Championship, with each edition carrying a $1 million guarantee. The dates on the schedule are Sept. 6, 13, 20 and 27. CoinPoker’s own tournament page says the next CoinMillion starts Sept. 6, costs $215 to enter and runs as a two-day monthly flagship event.

As reported on Aug. 17, CoinPoker had already said CoinMillion would run on every Sunday in September, with the Sept. 6 event as the fourth edition. The schedule confirms that full Sunday lineup.

CoinPoker also said the CoinMillion unique-player cap will rise from 4,000 to 6,000 beginning with the next edition after the Aug. 10 August Edition. That August running drew 3,856 entries, finished with a three-way deal among PuraSuerte69, ImpinadordeKombi and KingTurnJester, and left PuraSuerte69 with $80,741. CoinPoker described that event as the third CoinMillion and said it was nearing its unique-player cap for the first time.

The September CoinMillions sit inside the broader GOPC, which runs from Aug. 23 to Sept. 28 and guarantees $50 million in prizes. NY Sports Day said the series uses schedules tuned for Europe, Latin America and Asia, while CoinPoker says the Sunday CoinMillion events are Medal Events that come with a GOPC Gold Medal and a spot in the CoinMillion Hall of Champions. Satellites will appear in the lobby ahead of the events and continue through September, with direct-to-ticket options starting at $5.50 and free Step satellites also available. The September winners will each earn the usual CoinMillion trophy, plus their place in the Hall of Champions.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

GGPoker has been added to Alberta’s gambling registry, a move that puts the brand a step closer to a regulated online poker launch in the province. Pokerfuse described it as the first poker-focused operator to secure registration in Alberta, and said the entry on the AGLC registry was added on Aug. 12 with a one-year expiration.

As reported when Alberta launched in July, poker was still missing on day one because the province had ring-fenced the market. Under the current setup, players can only be matched with other people physically located in Alberta, with no shared liquidity to Ontario or international pools.

The registration matters, but it does not by itself open the doors to real-money play. Pokerfuse said GGPoker had not yet obtained a license from the Alberta iGaming Corporation, which means it did not appear on the official list of regulated iGaming websites at the time described.

The same report said the registration is GGPoker’s second regulated Canadian province after Ontario. It also said the approval technically allows the operator to keep operating from offshore during the province’s transition period for the next two months, while it works through the remaining steps.

Other poker-facing brands have already gone through the AGLC process, including PokerStars, BetMGM, 888, Party and BetRivers. According to Pokerfuse, an AiGC spokesperson said the regulator was in “continued discussions” with other jurisdictions, but that as of July 13 shared liquidity with players outside Alberta would not be available and Albertans could only participate inside the province’s regulated market.

Casinos.com added that AGLC registration is only the first step, because operators also need a commercial agreement with AiGC before they can take a single real-money bet. It said GGPoker has not said when, or whether, it will complete that second step, even though it already operates in Ontario.

That report also said a live Alberta product would make GGPoker the province’s first dedicated online poker platform since the market opened. The bigger issue remains liquidity, because Alberta’s population is fewer than five million people and the province is still relying on the same ring-fenced model Ontario launched with in 2022.

Operators seeking a transition extension must show a clear pathway to compliance by Oct. 13. The Supreme Court of Canada is scheduled to hear arguments on Oct. 7 in the Ontario appeal over whether online poker can legally include players located outside Canada.

PokerOrg published a sneak peek from Garrett Adelstein’s upcoming interview in which he says the famous J-4 controversy should not be read as a personal attack. In the clip, Adelstein says he first felt wronged, but has since come to see the episode as alleged con artists finding vulnerabilities in Hustler Casino Live’s setup and taking their shot.

He says the fallout had real personal consequences, but that it “wasn’t about me” and could have been anyone sitting in his seat that day. The teaser is part of an interview with Craig Tapscott, and PokerOrg says the full conversation will follow later this week.

The preview also points to Adelstein’s memoir, Beneath The Cards, which PokerOrg says will be published by Permuted Press on Sept. 1 and distributed by Simon & Schuster. The book comes as the hand remains one of the most debated live-stream moments in modern poker.

The controversy began on Sept. 29, 2022, when Robbi Jade Lew called Adelstein’s all-in shove on Hustler Casino Live with jack-four and won a $269,000 pot. Hustler Casino Live’s own J-4 report says the hand was streamed to a worldwide audience and that Lew later agreed to return half the pot.

That report also says Bulletproof found no evidence of tampering, remote access, viruses, rogue hardware or previously installed programs on the machines it inspected. At the same time, the assessment said the system review was inconclusive and that no security process can fully stop mechanical or electronic cheating.

Against that backdrop, Adelstein’s new framing is that the episode was about opportunists exploiting weak points in the livestream, not about him personally.

The €1,650 PokerStars Open Main Event at EPT Barcelona finished its eight Day 1 flights with 4,333 entries and a €6,239,520 prize pool. A total of 648 players moved on to Day 2, and Maor Zaharagi led the survivors with 864,000 chips.

The numbers were down from last year. PokerOrg said the 2025 version drew 5,036 entries and a €7,251,840 prize pool, while PokerNews’ 2025 results page lists the same event at 5,035 entries, including 2,750 re-entries, with the same prize pool. As covered in our Aug. 12 look at the Barcelona festival, PokerStars had already added a new €2,200 In the Money at 180,000 event to the stop alongside the usual headline action.

A few familiar names were still in the hunt. Jamie Dwan returned with 682,000 chips, and PokerOrg noted that he had finished fifth in Event #17: €20,000 NLH for €58,400 and fourth in Event #3: €1,100 NLH for €17,480 at Barcelona. The same report also pointed to his recent Super High Roller win at the GUKPT stop in Coventry for £47,200, plus six bracelet-event cashes at the WSOP in Las Vegas and a $50,000 NLH High Roller title worth $2,276,961.

Thomas Eychenne was another notable name in the Day 2 field, starting with 504,000. He won the 2025 EPT Barcelona Main Event after a heads-up deal with Sebastian Ionita that left both players with €1,117,175 and reserved €100,000 for the champion, and PokerNews said it was his first live tournament win.

Eychenne also described the victory as a pressure release, saying he expected to play with less pressure going forward. PokerNews reported that he told Ionita during deal talks that he was a heads-up specialist and felt he had the edge because he had played many more hands in that format.

The Open will crown its champion on Saturday, the same day the EPT Barcelona Main Event gets underway.

World Poker Tour has filled out the map for WPT Seoul at INSPIRE Entertainment Resort in Incheon, with the festival set for October 30 to November 9 and 46 events spread across 11 days. The headliner is the WPT Seoul INSPIRE Championship, which carries a KRW 1 billion guaranteed prize pool and a KRW 1.75 million buy-in, and the final table is slated for a dedicated livestream.

As covered in July, this will be the first tournament staged in INSPIRE’s new second-floor entertainment space. That area includes the purpose-built YY Poker Club, which features 70 tables and its own livestream studio, along with Daia and Ultra Lounge.

The opening day leans into mixed formats and quick-fire side events. The schedule begins on October 30 with an Inspire Superstack, PLO, a Turbo Bounty, and a 15-second Hyper Turbo, along with a Championship Warm Up that guarantees KRW 100 million and a Mini High Roller Warm Up. Early on, the series also adds Mystery Bounty, Freezeout, Monster Stack, Survivor Bounty, multiple PLO events, Big O and several High Roller tournaments.

Buy-ins start at KRW 300,000 and run up to KRW 8 million. The championship itself starts on November 5, with four starting flights, 40,000-chip starting stacks, registration open until the start of Level 10 in each opening flight, and re-entry allowed. The best-stack-forward format applies across the championship flights.

The opening days also line up with a KRW 8 million Super High Roller on November 5 and a KRW 3.5 million High Roller on November 8. The closing stretch on November 9 includes the championship final day, High Roller Day 2, Mini Championship Day 2, a Closer, PLO Bounty Turbo and Championship Turbo, plus evening events.

The same coverage also says WPT Seoul will be directed by Danny McDonagh. WPT’s event page adds one important wrinkle: the stop is listed as a special event presented by Khartes, not an official World Poker Tour event, so players will not earn WPT Player-of-the-Year points.

Brent Carter, a two-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner and a 1990s poker legend, has died at 77. His partner of 32 years, Jane Paquette, said the exact cause of death was not revealed.

Paquette said he was one of the kindest people she ever knew, that he never accepted anything for helping someone, and that when he won something, everyone got something. She also said he had suffered several heart attacks and strokes in the past.

He won his first WSOP gold bracelet in 1991 in the $1,500 no-limit hold’em event for $156,800, then added a second in 1994 in the $1,500 limit Omaha event for $83,400. PokerNews also noted that he finished third in the 1995 WSOP Main Event for $302,750, which was his career-high score.

That Main Event result was part of a broader WSOP record that also included four third-place finishes and three runner-up finishes. The Hendon Mob listed $3,099,501 in lifetime tournament earnings dating back to 1986, and his last recorded cash came in 2015.

Paquette said Carter’s poker career began at the Stardust with the Stairway to the Stars tournaments, where he learned on the job. She said he mostly played Omaha but played everything, and he was the kind of player who studied schedules closely enough to point out when events overlapped and kept some players from entering both.

Before poker became his full-time focus, Carter raced harness horses. He later compared the two worlds by saying both came down to strategy, and that the best horse or the best hand does not always win.

His later years also included a federal case tied to the New York State Gaming Commission. In 2021 he was charged with spreading a hoax after allegedly mailing suspicious white powder and threatening letters to the commission’s headquarters in Schenectady, New York; he later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to time served in a June 2023 update.

Paquette said she met him in 1994 and they were together almost from the first day. She said he took food to homeless people two or three times a week and could talk to anyone.

CoinPoker has been named the presenting sponsor of a seven-day High Stakes Poker livestream run on PokerGO from Aug. 25-31. The broadcasts will come from the PokerGO Studio in Las Vegas, and PokerGO plans to stream live high-stakes cash games every day across the full week.

The deal gives CoinPoker branding inside the livestreams and in related promotional content throughout the run. That means the operator will be visible across multiple broadcasts instead of a single sponsored episode. PokerGO CEO Brent Hanks said the seven-day format was a first for High Stakes Poker, and described the show as a place for the biggest personalities and the highest stakes in the game.

The first lineup announced for the week included CoinPoker ambassador Alejandro Lococo, Andrew Robl and Rick Salomon. More players were expected to be added before the broadcasts begin, along with exact broadcast times and other details.

As covered earlier in August, CoinPoker had already launched its Global Online Poker Championship, a separate $50 million series that runs through Sept. 28. CoinPoker said the High Stakes Poker partnership fits its push to continue expanding in the online poker market, while also giving Lococo a direct presence in the action at the table.

Lucas Teixeira Rodrigues won GGPoker’s WSOP Online 2026 event #2, the $300 Gladiators of Poker. He turned a $300 buy-in into $579,752 and added a $30,000 Super Pass for WSOP Paradise.

PokerNews reported that the event was the second of 33 bracelet-awarding events in the series. It drew 17,077 entries and a $4,764,483 prize pool, with 1,307 players left after Day 1 and only nine still alive when the final table began. As reported on Aug. 17, Brazilian player Raphael Caixeta had already opened WSOP Online 2026 with the first bracelet.

Teixeira played under the alias Fino y Elegante and reached the final table with 140 big blinds, nearly double Vladislav Saprykin’s 77 and well ahead of Rafael Santanna Barcia’s 52. Poland’s Michal Nocon was the short stack and the first player out, taking $72,417 for ninth.

The rest of the pay jump followed the same pattern. Rishi Mehra of Singapore finished eighth for $93,906 and Luciano Hollanda of Brazil placed seventh for $121,774. Kevin John took sixth for $157,914, Jian Zhao finished fifth for $204,781, Saprykin exited fourth for $265,561, and Barcia bowed out in third for $344,383.

That left Teixeira heads-up with Sri Lanka’s Sunaina Bhartia, who earned $446,602. Spadepoker said Brazil had three representatives at the final table and described the turning point as a hand where Bhartia shoved Q-2, Teixeira called with A-J, and a board of 8-5-8-3-4 locked up the title. The same report said the Super Pass includes a seat in the Super Main Event and accommodations at Baha Mar, and it framed the result as Brazil’s second victory within two days.

Brandon Wilson took fifth place in the €10,200 No-Limit Hold’em Unlimited Re-Entry event at EPT Barcelona, earning €28,600 from a 31-entry field.

PokerStake described it as a strong performance and said it looked good for his chances in the rest of the series. In the same report, Wilson said he usually decides which events to sell on PokerStake based on the tournaments fans are sweating the most, pointing to the WSOP, PGT and Triton Poker Series, and said buyers get entertainment value and the chance to cheer for a player they believe in.

PokerNews independently matched the result and said the event generated a €310,000 prize pool. Elias Suhonen won the title for €114,200 after beating Nicholas Seward heads-up for €73,700. Before that, Jean-Noel Thorel finished with €48,900 and Mehdi Chaoui took €35,300.

The cash came during PokerStars’ Barcelona stop at Casino Barcelona. SpadePoker said Barcelona and the European Poker Tour have been linked for more than two decades, with EPT history beginning in the city in 2004, and said this year’s festival runs through Aug. 29.

Brock Wilson won the €20,000 No-Limit Hold’em Unlimited Re-Entry at EPT Barcelona for €233,556 after beating Ottomar Ladva heads-up. The event drew 32 entries, including re-entries, and built a €627,200 prize pool.

According to PokerNews, the top five shared the money. Ladva took €150,600 for second, Gabriel Tavares earned €99,900 for third, Jean-Noel Thorel got €72,200 for fourth, and Jamie Dwan cashed for €58,400 in fifth.

The report said Wilson finished 16th in the 2026 WSOP Main Event for $410,475, then later finished second in a $25,500 No-Limit Hold’em High Roller at the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open for $268,450.

The same festival also produced wins in several side events. In the €550 No-Limit Hold’em In-the-Money at 180,000, 572 entries made a €286,000 prize pool, and players who reached 180,000 chips on Day 1 advanced to Day 2 with a min-cash locked in. Eighty-five players returned, Maria Konnikova reached heads-up against Sacha Cohen, and she finished second for €32,500 while Cohen won the title for €52,000.

Another EPT Barcelona result saw Yves Thalman take the €3,250 No-Limit Hold’em Seniors High Roller for €43,530. The report linked that to his fifth-place finish in the €1,100 Seniors at the prior Barcelona stop, and said Vranken finished second after being eliminated by Thalman.

Vranken had won the €1,100 Seniors on August 16 for €55,650 and another €28,770. The festival also saw Mads Larsen win the €3,150 No-Limit Hold’em Hyper Turbo Freezeout for €40,870 in a 37-player field, with Apostolos Kofidis collecting €26,400 as runner-up.

888poker has scheduled its BLAST Cashback promotion for Aug. 19-25, and PokerNews reported that eligible players can get up to 50% back on the BLAST fees they generate during the seven-day run. According to 888poker’s promo page, the rebate is tiered: 10% back on $5 to $49 in weekly BLAST fees, 20% on $50 to $399, and 50% on $400 or more.

The offer comes with a $5 weekly rake minimum, a $500 cap on cashback, and an exclusion for BLAST buy-ins of $50 and above. Rewards are paid directly as cash within 72 hours after the promotion ends, and the page says the deal is for funded players only, with country restrictions applying. As covered in our Aug. 6 report on 888poker’s Happy Hour rakeback, the operator has already used another short-term promotion earlier this month.

BLAST is 888poker’s jackpot sit-and-go format. Before the first hand, a random multiplier sets the prize pool, and most games feature 2x or 3x multipliers, although the format can occasionally reach prizes worth as much as 10,000 times the original buy-in. Pokerfuse reported a similar BLAST Cashback campaign ran July 2-8 and also topped out at 50% cashback with a $500 ceiling.

CoinPoker has finalized the schedule for its Global Online Poker Championship, a $50 million guaranteed online series that runs from Aug. 23 through Sept. 28. The festival is split across Europe, Latin America and Asia, and its centerpiece is a $530 main event with a $3 million guarantee and 17 starting flights.

As reported on Aug. 5, CoinPoker had already launched the championship in broad form; the new schedule now fills in the late-summer calendar and confirms three buy-in tiers for the headline event structure. Those three main-event tiers add up to $4.25 million in guarantees, with the $55 Global Main at $1 million and the $11 Global Mini Main at $250,000 joining the $530 flagship.

The $55 Global Main runs with three Day 1 flights each day from Aug. 23 through Sept. 20, plus a final starting flight on Sept. 21, with Day 2 also on Sept. 21. The $11 Global Mini Main mirrors that structure and finishes with Day 2 on Sept. 28. The $530 main event begins with its first starting flight on Sept. 6 and brings its qualifiers back for Day 2 on Sept. 28.

CoinPoker describes the $3 million main event guarantee as the biggest in its history.

The rest of the series adds a stack of side events and promotions. Opening day includes $1,050 and $5,200 high-roller events with $800,000 in combined guarantees, Sept. 22 carries a $25,500 tournament with a $1 million guarantee, and Sept. 27 closes with a $10,300 High Roller Championship worth $500,000.

CoinMillion returns every Sunday in September at a $215 buy-in and a $1 million guarantee, with Day 1 on Sept. 6, 13, 20 and 27 and Day 2 on the following Monday. CoinMasters also gets a GOPC upgrade, with $150 BITCOIN events at $400,000 guaranteed on multiple Sundays and a special $500,000 edition on Sept. 20, plus a $25 Mini CoinMasters every Sunday. The promotional pool totals $350,000, including $200,000 for regional leaderboards, split $105,000 for Europe, $55,000 for LATAM and $40,000 for Asia, $20,000 for the Podium Race and $130,000 in Bankroll Boosts. CoinPoker says there will be more than 700 medal events, with gold medals shipped as trophies and silver and bronze awarded digitally.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier filed two lawsuits in Hillsborough County Circuit Court against online sweepstakes casino operators and payment processors, accusing them of running illegal gambling businesses under Florida law and violating the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.

The targets include Stake.us and VGW-owned Chumba Casino, LuckyLand, and Global Poker. According to News4JAX’s reporting on the complaints, the state says the companies built their business around a dual-currency model meant to hide real-money gambling behind a sweepstakes label.

Under that system, customers buy packages of “Gold Coins” that come with “Stake Cash” or “Sweeps Coins.” The complaints say those credits work as redeemable wagering chips and can be cashed out for cryptocurrency, gift cards, or cash after some play-through requirements.

The lawsuits say the platforms offer slots, blackjack, roulette, and poker while marketing themselves as free, safe, legal “social” entertainment. They also say the companies pushed large wins through celebrity and influencer campaigns, and Uthmeier said the operators were “preying on Floridians, including minors and seniors,” while dodging licensing, taxation, and consumer-protection rules.

Florida’s complaints say the state sharply limits gambling and allows slot machines only in narrow circumstances at licensed facilities. CBS12 reported that Florida’s argument is that the dual-currency setup is designed to make real-money gambling look like lawful promotional play, setting up the central question for the court: whether these platforms are prohibited gambling operations or legal sweepstakes.

The state is seeking permanent injunctions to stop the defendants from operating or soliciting business in Florida. It is also asking for forfeiture and recovery of consumer losses, disgorgement of ill-gotten gains, restitution, civil penalties under FDUTPA, and attorneys’ fees.

Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Tulsa is set to host the World Series of Poker Circuit from Aug. 26 through Sept. 7, and local coverage described the return as 12 days of action, with 45 events and 18 official ring tournaments. The Main Event Championship begins Sept. 4 and runs through Sept. 7.

According to the WSOP schedule page, Tulsa’s stop lists 18 numbered events, and the main event is a $1,700 NL Hold’em tournament. The page also identifies event #5 as a $300 Seniors No Limit Hold’em event, event #9 as a $400 40/40/40 NL Hold’em event, event #13 as a $300 Ladies No Limit Hold’em event, and event #17 as a $300 Seniors No Limit Hold’em II event.

The 40/40/40 format is aimed at players 40 and older, with 40-minute levels and a $40,000 starting stack. Hard Rock’s own newsroom described the Tulsa lineup differently, calling it a 47-event, 13-day series and saying buy-ins range from $140 to $1,700, with satellite qualifier buy-ins from $75 to $140.

As covered in July, the Circuit had already drawn a big summer field in Durant earlier in the season. Hard Rock frames the tour as a buildup to the World Series, with championship events in no-limit Texas hold ’em and preliminary events that can include other poker variants.

The casino also points to last year’s Tulsa stop, where John Dollinger beat a field of 487 to win $147,178 and his second WSOP Circuit ring, and more than $2.1 million was paid out in total prize money. Guests must be at least 21 years old to play at the Tulsa stop.

The Grosvenor UK Poker Tour is heading back to Bedfordshire for the sixth stop of its landmark 20th season, with GUKPT Luton set for Aug. 30 to Sept. 8 at Grosvenor G Casino Luton. The festival is built around a £250 Mini Main with a £100,000 guarantee and a £560 Main Event with a £150,000 guarantee.

The published schedules are not identical on the finish date. Grosvenor’s own GUKPT page lists Luton as running Aug. 30-Sept. 6, while PokerNews says the festival runs through Sept. 8. The card also adds a £1,000 High Roller with a £50,000 guarantee, a £200 Turbo, a £150 Deepstack and a £200 Last Chance.

As covered in May, the tour had already made one Luton stop this year, where Yucel Eminoglu won the £1,250 Main Event from 190 entries and banked £57,640 from a £236,250 prize pool. That same festival saw Ajay Kejriwal win the £1,650 High Roller for £31,060, Derek Boyle top a 498-entry Mini Main for £26,775 and Craig Sarginson complete a Pot-Limit Omaha double.

The new Luton schedule starts on Aug. 30 with the final flight of the £200 Summer Sizzler South. The £250 Mini Main uses four starting flights across three days, beginning with Day 1a at 6 p.m. on Aug. 30, before Day 2 on Sept. 1 and a champion the following day.

The £560 Main Event begins with Day 1a on Sept. 3, adds a Day 1b and a turbo Day 1c for late entries, then brings survivors back for Day 2 on Sept. 5 and the final day the afternoon after that. Must-Play Cashout satellites offer routes into the High Roller and Main Event throughout the week, and Grosvenor says its feeder satellites start from as little as £1, with LIVE EVENT CREDIT tickets usable in any GUKPT tournament and never expiring. The GUKPT Cup returns later in the week.

The Southern Poker/GCP Tour Louisiana State Poker Championship runs Aug. 19-30 at Horseshoe Bossier City. The Southern Poker events page lists the stop at Horseshoe Bossier City, and the schedule also includes a ladies event on Aug. 20 and a seniors event on Aug. 25.

The first event is the CLIP 75K Milestone Satellite at 2 pm on Aug. 19, with a $320 buy-in, according to 710 KEEL. Southern Poker describes that satellite as a chance to win a seat into several larger events, including the Multi-Bag, Humpday, BeauCoup and Main Event.

The GCP Tour schedule page says the tour offers real-time updates from the floor, including big hands, player highlights and breaking news. It also says completed events are followed with final standings, payouts, final-table photos and recaps, and that players can earn tour points at every stop to move up the standings.

The Bossier City series also fits into a broader 2026 Southern Poker calendar at the same venue. The events page lists other Southern Poker runs at Horseshoe Bossier City earlier this year, including Feb. 26-March 8 and June 16-21, showing the casino has already hosted multiple tour stops in 2026.

Evan Sandberg reached the Arizona State Poker Championship final table in the best spot, with the chip lead at Talking Stick Resort. The 10-handed finale came from a record 4,018-entry field, and the remaining players were already guaranteed $25,801 with $627,050 reserved for the winner.

As reported yesterday by PokerNews, Charlie Diep led 58 survivors into Day 3. The 20th-anniversary edition built a $4,018,000 prize pool, and the road to the final table ran through 482 Day 1 bags before the field was trimmed to the last ten.

Sandberg entered the final day with 36.6 million chips, ahead of Brandon Conrad on 31 million and Sergio Segura on 30.4 million. The rest of the table was well behind, with Hill Kerby next on 11.2 million and John Riordan on 10.2 million.

Jared Rogers had 9.6 million, Moussa Haddad 8.8 million, Jonathan Roeder 8.6 million, John Phan 8 million and Ronnie Bardah 4.2 million. Michael Bennett missed the final-table bubble when his pocket deuces failed against Conrad's sevens, and Erik Gault was the 12th-place finisher when Sandberg's nines held against his K-10. Play stopped with 38:00 left in Level 34 at blinds of 300,000/600,000.

RunGood Poker Series is taking its Golden Expedition to The Barrel Social Club in Franklin, Kentucky, from Sept. 1-7. The seven-day stop has 11 ring events, and the $800 Main Event carries a $250,000 guarantee.

The series lands in Kentucky’s social-club poker model rather than a traditional casino room. PokerNews reported that players have to join the club before entering an RGPS event, and that daily membership can be as little as $10.

RunGood’s schedule page shows a busy opening stretch. Sept. 1 starts with a $300 Seniors event, a $300 Series Opener, a $200 Guest Bounty with mystery prizes including up to $1,000 cash, and an on-demand $100 Flip and Go.

The next wave centers on the $400 PokerNews PowerStack, which has two flights on Sept. 2 and a $30,000 guarantee before restarting on Sept. 3. That same day also brings a $300 one-day NLH event, a $400 Pot-Limit Omaha ring event with a $25,000 guarantee, and a $200 Turbo Main Event satellite.

The Main Event flights run Sept. 4-6, with two starting flights each day and a $250,000 guarantee attached to every flight. The final day on Sept. 7 adds the Day 2 restart, a $400 Labor Day Black Chip Bounty, and a $400 Last Chance event, with the Main Event final table set for that day.

The Barrel’s own tournament page says the festival carries more than $300,000 in guaranteed prize pools. Its membership page lists day passes at $10, monthly memberships at $60, annual memberships at $500, and says every person on site needs an active membership. PokerNews said it will provide live reporting throughout the Main Event from The Barrel Social Club.

dfbuzzbeater won Clubs Poker’s No-Fee Daily Mix leaderboard with 1,461 points after cashing in nine events. The weekly crown came with 200 SC in No-Fee Mix Tickets and a collectible Chip Protector.

The week’s 14 mixed-game events drew 246 unique players and 892 entries. Every event overlaid, and the promotion generated 7,450 SC in added value across the schedule.

As covered when the series launched in July, Clubs Poker set the No-Fee Daily Mix up as a daily mixed-game rotation with no fixed ending date, one low-buy-in and one high-buy-in event each day, and a standalone weekly leaderboard, according to pokerfuse.

dfbuzzbeater built the win with a strong run through the week. The player started with a string of cashes, won Friday’s 50 SC Big Bet Mix, and then finished second in both TORSE events on Saturday. The report said that mix of one win, two runner-up finishes and six other cashes was enough to seal the title by 164.5 points.

Spooky finished second on the leaderboard after opening with a win in Monday’s 10 SC Draw Mix, adding a runner-up finish in Wednesday’s 50 SC Triple Stud and cashing five other events. bamf6689 was third with six cashes, including a runner-up finish in the 10 SC TOE Mix, while Polsk33 took fourth after winning both Tuesday Omaha 4/5/6 Mix events.

Across the first four weeks of the promotion, the weekly crown has gone to four different players, with bamf6689, Wahooo, SH0WOFF and dfbuzzbeater each taking a title. Both bamf6689 and dfbuzzbeater have already reached the top three twice in just four weeks, which the report said leaves room for a future repeat champion.

John Kim turned an 80-cent promotion reward into a $42,700 first-place finish in ACR Poker’s Mini Phil’s Thrill on August 9. The event drew 61 entries, paid seven spots, and built a $152,500 prize pool.

According to a PRNewswire release and Americas Cardroom’s news site, Kim is a 47-year-old sales consultant from Chicago who joined ACR Poker in 2021. His path started with a Venom Vault Survivor Flip Step ticket worth $0.80, which he kept winning forward until it became a $2,650 Mini Phil’s Thrill seat. That route also reflects the broader Venom Vault setup, where the promotional ladder can start at $0.80 and lead to a $2,650 ticket.

The biggest swing came near the money bubble, with nine players left and only seven paid. Kim had about 680,000 chips and pocket aces when another player shoved roughly 700,000 with pocket sixes. Kim called, the aces held, and his stack jumped to around 1.5 million, which put him in the chip lead by seven-handed play.

Kim said he was starstruck while keeping an eye on Chris Moneymaker, Alex Foxen and Kristen Foxen. He said the tension eased once the event got three-handed and he started playing his spots again.

Kim said his previous best online result was about $1,400 in a $21 Hyper. He also said his car had recently been repossessed, that he had moved in with a family member, and that his priorities were getting transportation back, finding a place to live and caring for his three dogs. The Venom Vault remains open through August 30.

CoinPoker has lifted the Daily Dollar Sunday Edition guarantee from $3,000 to $5,000 after the new $1 micro-stakes event drew a first weekend. The regular Daily Dollar launched on 13 August and runs at 17:00 UTC on the other days with a $1,000 guarantee, while Sundays switch to the bigger edition.

As covered earlier in August, CoinPoker has been broadening its fixed-schedule online lineup, including the monthly CoinMillion. The Daily Dollar is part of that same move toward permanent low-buy-in action, and the Sunday winner also gets a digital award in the CoinPoker Trophy Cabinet, which displays tournament achievements on the Career page of a player profile.

The first Sunday Edition ran on 16 August and attracted 3,740 entries from 2,375 unique players. There were 1,365 re-entries, and the final prize pool climbed to $3,440, comfortably above the original $3,000 guarantee.

Dnxx took the opening Sunday title after entering three times and collected $453.92. That made Dnxx the first player to add a Daily Dollar Sunday trophy to the Trophy Cabinet, and Mario Mosböck described the event as the “smallest buy-in trophy event in the world.”

CoinPoker is also giving players multiple ways to get in. The reports say seats can be bought directly for $1, won through $0.10 satellites, or earned in freerolls, and players in other micro-stakes tournaments can win up to three Daily Dollar tickets a week that work for either the regular Daily Dollar or the Sunday Edition. The higher $5,000 Sunday guarantee is set to kick in on 23 August.

Curtis King won the WSOP Circuit Cherokee Main Event at Harrah’s Cherokee for $363,703 and his first career Circuit ring after beating Toby Boas heads-up.

As reported earlier in the week, King came into the final day with the chip lead after the event was down to its final 11 players. The $1,700 no-limit hold’em tournament drew 1,681 entries across two starting flights and paid 247 players.

King and Boas quickly separated from the rest of the field, with both holding far more chips than anyone else at the table. Boas first pulled ahead after eliminating Scott Gronroos in seventh place, then King answered by taking back the lead when Andrew Kelsall ran a flopped set of eights into King’s turned flush.

Boas widened the gap again by knocking out Donta Moss in fifth, but King stayed in range by sending Kataka Eaton out in fourth. Ryan D’Angelo then doubled through King to set up the final duel, and King later eliminated D’Angelo after D’Angelo spiked two pair against him and King found a river four to stay alive.

The last hand finished with King open-shoving on a 9♠7♥4♥6♠ board. Boas called with 5♦4♦, but King’s pocket eights held when the K♦ hit the river.

Reports differed on the exact prize-pool figure. The official WSOP recap said the event started with a $2 million guarantee and generated $2,307,380, while Card Player and Spadepoker put the total prize pool at $2,546,715. WVNews identified King as being from Charleston, West Virginia, and said the Cherokeee stop ran from Aug. 6-17 across 18 ring events with $8,698,110 distributed in prize money overall.

The win was King’s biggest career cash, and Poker.org said it pushed his lifetime tournament earnings past $1 million on HendonMob.

Charlie Diep will start Day 3 as the chip leader in the Arizona State Poker Championship after he rode a late Day 2 heater to 9.51 million chips. The 58 survivors at Talking Stick Resort are all already in the money, and each has locked up at least $9,200 from the record 4,018-entry event.

As reported yesterday, according to PokerNews, the tournament had already reached 4,018 entries and returned 469 players for Day 2. That turnout built a $4,018,000 prize pool and left the field chasing the $627,050 top prize.

Erik Gault is second in chips with 8.47 million, and Jonathan Roeder is third with 7.635 million. Toby Price remains very much in the mix with 5.94 million, while John Riordan, Bradley Gafford and Christina Read also survived with 5.245 million, 4.445 million and 3.725 million.

Day 2 ended on a tense note. The last elimination came on the final hand before the scheduled break, and several pots helped shape the top of the counts, including Gregory Sessler’s three-way all-in that turned into a flush and a crucial triple-up, and Joseph Osterbauer’s ace-king holding against ace-deuce.

The Day 3 restart has one hand left in Level 25 at blinds of 30,000/60,000, before Level 26 begins at 40,000/80,000 with an 80,000 big blind ante. The plan is to play down to a nine-handed final table, and the 58 players are set to return at 10:15 a.m. this morning.

Elias Suhonen took down the €10,200 No-Limit Hold’em event at the 2026 PokerStars EPT Barcelona festival, beating Nicholas Seward heads-up for the title and €114,200. The event drew 31 entries and generated a €310,000 prize pool.

Seward finished second for €73,700. Brandon Wilson was the first player to cash, taking fifth for €28,600, while Mehdi Chaoui earned €35,300. Jean-Noel Thorel was eliminated before the final duel.

According to PokerNews, Suhonen’s result was the fourth six-figure live score of his career. The site also described the win as one of the festival’s early headline results, with five champions already crowned only a couple of days into the series, and Suhonen’s payout the largest of those early finishes.

EPT Barcelona runs from August 16 to 29 and is headlined by the €5,300 EPT Main Event. This year’s schedule also includes PokerStars’ new €2,200 In the Money at 180,000 tournament, which awards a Day 2 seat and locks up a cash as soon as a player reaches 180,000 chips, removing the usual money bubble.

Hustler Casino Live announced that Daniel Negreanu will make his debut on Friday, Aug. 28. The game is set at $100/$200 with a $50,000 minimum buy-in, and the rest of the lineup has not yet been revealed.

The reveal came through an AI-generated video posted on X, with HCL regulars singing about Negreanu and “Big D Energy coming to HCL.” Kid Poker shared the clip and said, “This video is sooooo ridiculous I had to share.”

As covered in July, Negreanu had just won his eighth WSOP bracelet in the $100,000 PLO High Roller. He has been mostly a tournament player in recent years, usually staying close to Las Vegas for the WSOP and PGT circuits, with the annual WSOP Paradise trip to the Bahamas standing out as the main exception.

PokerNews said the L.A.-based livestream has managed to lure the eight-time WSOP bracelet winner back to televised cash games. PokerOrg said his last real-money cash-game run was a 2023 PokerGO No Gamble, No Future session that left him down more than $300,000, including a painful pot against Phil Hellmuth, while PokerStrategy described the HCL appearance as his first cash game in two years.

PokerOrg also said Negreanu preferred pot-limit Omaha in a cash-game setting when explaining why he didn’t play after the Keating challenge.

The appearance had been a long time coming. PokerTube said the pairing had been on the cards since March 2025, when NSUS Group bought out Nick Vertucci’s stake in the company behind Hustler Casino Live, and speculation kept building without a payoff.

HCL also spent June bringing cameras to the WSOP for special livestreamed cash games, but Negreanu sat out every session. His next livestreamed poker run is already on the calendar too: PokerNews reported that he plans to stream the final 10 days of the 2026 World Series of Poker Online on GGPoker in September, starting with the $10,000 PLO event.

Argentina’s Fedevalle turned a huge heads-up deficit into a win in 888poker’s latest $80,000 Mystery Bounty Main Event, beating Magnolia176 for the $7,103 top prize. When the final duel began, Fedevalle had 21.5 big blinds against Magnolia176’s 123.2, so the comeback came from a very deep hole.

According to PokerNews, the tournament drew 772 entrants and overlaid the $80,000 guarantee. Brazil’s TTeixeirAA finished only 32nd, but still left as the event’s biggest winner after pulling the $8,000 jackpot bounty before busting.

As covered in an earlier report on Germany’s mr.diego97, 888poker’s Mystery Bounty Main Event had already produced another champion earlier in August.

The final table started with Ukraine’s tarakan915 as the shortest stack, and he was the first player out. He three-bet shoved ace-ten of diamonds from the small blind, Magnolia176 called with king-queen, and a straight on the turn turned into a better straight on the river to send tarakan915 home.

The table then settled into a slower stretch. Billy_Slater padded a stack that got close to 100 big blinds after a hand against ZaCafu, whose pocket tens were cracked by a queen on the flop, and Zeaberration’s exit ended about an hour without an elimination. BrownBrit finished fifth, Billy_Slater went out fourth, and Guuadania lost the last shot at heads-up play when Magnolia176’s open-shove with ace-three won on a jack-high board.

Once it was heads-up, Magnolia176 still looked in control, but Fedevalle chipped back steadily. He won a hand with aces against ace-queen of diamonds, then took the lead when both players flopped diamond flushes and Fedevalle’s jack-six beat Magnolia176’s ten-three. On the last hand, Magnolia176 shoved 27 big blinds with king-seven of clubs and Fedevalle called with king-jack, then flopped a jack to seal the title.

It took 90 minutes for three players to bust from the final table, and less than 45 minutes more to finish the event after that.

Ignition Poker has launched The Players’ Championship, a new online tournament series with $6.5 million in guaranteed prize money. The promotion is built around themed weekends, a Warmup Week satellite period and a Players’ Choice event that lets players help shape part of the schedule.

As covered in earlier reports on this summer’s busy online poker calendar, Ignition is leaning on big guarantees and player-facing promos to make the series stand out. Card Player said the festival runs Aug. 23-Sept. 13, while Ignition’s own tournament page lists the main schedule through Sept. 6.

The opening weekend on Aug. 23 features non-PKO tournaments alongside Mystery KO events. PKO Weekend follows on Aug. 30 with progressive knockout tournaments, including PKO Main Events and re-entry side events, and Main Event Weekend lands on Sept. 6 with the flagship Main Event, a Mini Main, PKO, Mystery KO and High Roller.

Ignition says the series was built from player feedback, with changes to Sunday start times, tournament structures and registration periods. The site says Main Events start at 1 p.m. ET, earlier than Ignition’s usual 4 p.m. ET Sunday slot, and Warmup Week runs Aug. 9-22 with satellites that award tickets into Players’ Championship Main Events.

Warmup Week also includes a Flip Freeroll for players who bust eligible events before the money, with Sunday Main Event seats up for grabs the next day. The community-driven piece is the Players’ Choice Tournament, which has an $11 buy-in, a $5,000 guarantee and another $15,000 added by Ignition, with players voting on the format through social media. The winning format will be played as part of the closing Super Sunday.

The WSOP Circuit is heading back to Paris from Sept. 1-14 for a two-week festival at Partouche Casino Club Paris. The stop is being run with Groupe Partouche and Texapoker, and it marks the tour’s return to Paris two years after its inaugural visit. Over the full series, players will chase 13 rings, with buy-ins from €250 to €3,500, and every ring winner will also receive a $5,000 package to WSOP Paradise in the Bahamas.

According to PokerNews’ full schedule, the festival is headlined by a €1,500 Main Event with five starting flights and a Sept. 6-14 run. The first flight begins on Sept. 6, with more starting days on Sept. 10, 11 and 12, plus a turbo-style Day 1E on the evening of Sept. 12. Survivors return for Day 2 on Sept. 13, and the champion is set to be crowned on Sept. 14.

The opening day is a €500 Mini Main Event on Sept. 1. The rest of the live slate includes a €300 Colossus, €500 Mystery Bounty, €750 Knockout, €1,000 Deepstack, €500 Omaha, €2,500 High Roller and €3,500 Super High Roller, along with separate Ladies and Seniors 50+ championships.

PokerNews also lists PMU Play as the online partner. Daily “Win Your Seat” satellites will feed the Main Event, Deepstack, High Roller and Super High Roller, and the schedule adds a €250 WSOP Circuit Online ring event played exclusively through PMU Play. That online event has three starting flights on Sept. 6, 13 and 14, with its final table scheduled for the evening of Sept. 14.

For venue context, World Casino Directory reported that Groupe Partouche launched the new Partouche Casino Club Paris on May 12 after a €100 million investment, replacing the operator’s former Rue de Berri location. The club spans 8,500 square meters across seven floors, with about 100 tables overall, 80 poker tables, room for more than 1,000 guests and 250 staff hired, 60% of them croupiers.

BCPoker has launched a Telegram Mini-App that lets players jump straight into real-money poker inside Telegram, without a separate download or multiple registration steps. The entry point is the official @bcpoker_official_bot, and the new flow lets players open the poker room from inside the chat app.

According to PokerStrategy, the mini-app shows only the player’s Telegram username and folds BCPoker’s crypto cashier into the experience, so deposits and withdrawals can be handled directly instead of through external cashier agents. BCPoker says the goal is faster transactions and 24/7 control over funds. It also says player balances are backed 1:1 through Proof of Reserves and held separately from corporate assets.

As covered on Aug. 1, BCPoker had already rolled out a desktop client and cash-game rewards before adding Telegram. The company now says players can reach the tables through Telegram, Windows, Mac, web browser, iOS and Android. It also says its decentralized RNG system is designed to produce transparent and provably fair results on every hand.

The launch sits alongside a wider batch of product and pricing changes. BCPoker says the update also brought faster software, rakeback of up to 50%, reduced selected rake caps by up to 70%, a new CLUBS feature, a redesigned Spin & Go format, improved stability, smoother performance and multiple bug fixes. The operator also ran a Telegram launch promotion through the official bot offering players a chance to win up to $2,000.

A wider April GlobeNewswire release said BC Poker is operated by BC Poker Group and is licensed by the Anjouan Gaming Authority. It said the site supports six poker formats, from Texas Hold’em and Omaha to Short Deck (6+), Spin & Go, Sit & Go and Cash Tables, with buy-ins starting at about $1 equivalent. Webopedia says Telegram reached 1 billion monthly active users by March 2025, and describes Telegram mini-apps as lightweight web apps that run inside the platform without an external browser or download.

Bethesda family doctor Kyle Smith won the Potomac Summer Poker Open $3,000 Main Event after a heads-up deal with Phong Nguyen, and the published recap said he took home $136,054. He also left MGM National Harbor with the trophy after closing out a six-handed final table.

As reported yesterday, Patrick Martorella had gone into the final table with the chip lead after a first-hand double-up, but Smith changed the picture almost immediately. Smith started the day fourth in chips with 2.84 million, behind Martorella’s 3.805 million, Nguyen’s 3.75 million and Justin Liberto’s 3.53 million. The six finalists returned at 1 p.m. local time, and each had already locked up $37,204 from a $756,000 prize pool.

According to PokerNews, Smith said he had gone to work that morning before coming back for the final table and described himself as a recreational player. He said his live earnings were around $90,000 before this event, and his biggest previous score was $51,000 from a second-place finish in a $320 Mystery Bounty event at the 2023 Potomac Poker Open.

Smith’s first big swing came on one of the opening hands, when he called Martorella’s turn all-in with a pair of eights and then spiked a straight to bust Chris Kiani in sixth place. Martorella recovered some chips by calling Jonathan Moritz’s shove with two fives, but Moritz, who earned his seat through a BetMGM online qualifier, fell in fifth when he could not improve against Martorella. Martorella then lost a key pot to Smith and finished fourth, leaving Smith with about 60 percent of the chips in play three-handed.

Liberto, a two-time WSOP bracelet winner with more than $8 million in live earnings, entered the table as the most accomplished player left and went out in third after his last million went in from the small blind. Heads-up, Smith led 13.4 million to 3.4 million, but Nguyen kept pushing, first declining an extra $12,000 on top of the $112,048 second-place payout and later taking the lead after back-to-back hands that gave him a flush and then a nut straight. Smith briefly answered with kings over Nguyen’s pocket tens and later retook control when his ace-ten beat Nguyen’s queen-ten on a board with two tens, before the two reached a later deal that put Nguyen around $130,000 and Smith around $137,000 and left Smith with the glass MGM National Harbor trophy while Nguyen took the black BetMGM trophy.

The 2026 Borgata Summer Poker Open ran at Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in Atlantic City in mid-to-late July. PokerNews listed the dates as July 16-31, while Pokerfuse put them at July 15-31, and both described a festival with more than $4 million in guaranteed prize pools across No-Limit Hold’em, Pot-Limit Omaha, and mixed-game tournaments.

PokerNews also said it would live report six marquee events from the series, with chip counts, hand updates, photos and winner interviews from the tournament floor. Shirley Ang, PokerNews’ Senior Global Live Events Manager, said the outlet was thrilled to partner with BetMGM Poker to bring live reporting back to Borgata and called it one of the East Coast’s best tournament series.

The daily highlights labeled the $580 Monster Mirror Mystery Bounty the festival’s final trophy event. It drew 620 hopefuls, built a $310,000 prize pool, and used a unique format in which half the pool went to each side.

After 12 hours of play, Vance Martin III won the event, taking $25,650 for first and more than $37,000 in bounties. He beat George Grabe heads-up after a turbulent final table and hoisted the Borgata trophy.

Borgata Poker Open is a recurring live tournament series at the Borgata in Atlantic City, usually staged in winter, spring, summer and fall. Pokerfuse said the 2026 summer stop included a $1 million guaranteed Summer Poker Open Championship, and that Borgata’s annual poker calendar was completed when the Fall Poker Open returned in 2025 after a five-year hiatus. The same guide said Borgata’s winter series kicked off the new year with more than $8 million in guarantees across 75 events, while the spring open featured more than $4 million in guarantees overall and its championship drew 572 entries and paid almost $1.4 million to the top 72 finishers.

Shannon Lee won the $300 PokerNews PowerStack Mystery Bounty at Palace Poker in Grand Prairie, Texas, and beat Lynn Samples heads-up to close out the event. The finish gave Lee a career-best $17,842 payday, plus $3,100 more from bounties, along with her first RunGood Poker Series ring and trophy.

According to PokerNews, the tournament ran through six Day 1 flights and Day 2 and drew 648 entries. Only 79 players returned for the final day, and the $162,000 prize pool included $64,800 set aside for mystery bounties. The top bounty on offer when the cards went back in the air was $10,000.

RunGood’s Dallas schedule showed the tournament as part of the RGPS Golden Expedition stop at Palace Poker from Aug. 13-16, with flights spread across Thursday, Friday and Saturday before the Sunday restart. The event marked the series’ return to Grand Prairie after a spring Passport Season stop at the same room, and it opened the fall Golden Expedition calendar.

The final day also featured a strong showing from women in the Dallas poker scene, with Lee, Samples and Shannon Eason taking the biggest shares of the payout. Eason exited in 10th on the final-table bubble after pulling the $10,000 top bounty earlier in the day, and she later cashed another $7,500 bounty. Lee said the mystery-bounty format did not change her plan because she was focused on reaching the endgame rather than chasing knockouts. She also said she started playing poker in the 1990s, stepped away for about 15 years after having a child, and got back into the game about a year ago. Lee said Texas card rooms are welcoming for women and that nobody is trying to bully anybody.

The 2026 Arizona State Poker Championship reached 4,018 entries after four days at Talking Stick Resort, building a $4,018,000 prize pool and sending 469 players into Day 2. Toby Price led the returnees with 1,868,000 chips, and 12 players came back above the seven-figure mark.

As reported yesterday, according to PokerNews, the event stood at 2,881 entries through three starting flights, with 346 players already bagged and a field of 4,000 within reach. The final push took the tournament well past that mark, and there were 483 bags on the board before the double bags were removed to leave the 469 Day 2 survivors.

Gregory Brown returned with 1,354,000, Andrew Crookston with 1,278,000, Jean "Prince" Gaspard with 1,200,000 and Nicholas Julia with 1,138,000. Defending champion Brandon Mitchell will try to repeat with 390,000.

Day 2 is set to restart at 10:15 a.m. in Level 16, with blinds of 4,000/8,000 and 60-minute levels. The plan is to play 12 levels or continue until just 57 players remain, which works out to 12% of the returning field.

The tournament is a $1,130 buy-in event that starts players with 40,000 chips at 100/100 blinds and a 100 big blind ante. Day 1 levels ran 40 minutes apiece, with a 15-minute break every three levels and unlimited reentry open until the start of Level 10 around 5 p.m. local time.

The 469 returnees now play toward the next checkpoint, with the field set to be trimmed to 57 players if the day runs its full 12-level schedule.

Brazilian player Raphael Caixeta won the first gold bracelet of GGPoker’s 2026 WSOP Online by taking down the $700 7th Annual WSOP Kick-Off bounty event. The reported payout was $207,167 plus a $30,000 WSOP Paradise Super Main Event package, although the same PokerNews write-up also gave the cash prize as $206,167 in its final-result description.

As covered in our Aug. 6 preview, WSOP Online 2026 is running with 33 bracelet events from Aug. 16 through Sept. 29, and Caixeta has now put the opening title on the board. Somuchpoker’s schedule report also noted that the series’ $5,000 Main Event carries a $25 million guarantee.

The Kick-Off drew 3,607 entries and built a $2,398,655 prize pool. By the time players reached the bounty stage, 356 had already locked up at least a min-cash.

Caixeta finished heads-up against Khaw “Apacgg” Chin Wah, who took $160,310 for second. Argentina’s “Lichu89” was third for $104,258, Oleksii “ITakeIt” Trofymenko was fourth for $87,761, “baidan823” was fifth for $74,732, Eui “Rollpounder” Kim was sixth for $57,751, Miguel “Zerschlagen” Angelo Faria Lopes was seventh for $44,907, Milaim “PinkDevil9” Tafaj was eighth for $34,391, and China’s “fantexi0058” was ninth for $34,092.

Later on Aug. 17, the $300 Gladiators of Poker was set to resume at 7 p.m. BST, with Silvio Costa leading on 1,292,168 chips after 1,307 players advanced to Day 2 from 13,214 entries.

World Poker Tour is bringing its Australia festival back to The Star Sydney from Sept. 10-30, with a 21-day schedule that packs in 36 tournaments. The headliners are the A$1,500 WPT Prime Australia Championship and the A$5,000 WPT Australia Championship, and both are set to end on livestreamed final tables.

The slate opens with the A$1,250 Australian Poker Cup from Sept. 10-14. The festival also includes a A$500 Ladies Australian Championship, a A$1,150 Sydney PLO Open, a A$1,350 Mystery Bounty, a A$10,000 WPT Australia High Roller and a A$5,000 Australian PLO Championship. Players will also have a wide satellite menu feeding the biggest events, with seats available into the Australian Poker Cup, both championship events, the Mystery Bounty, the Australian PLO Championship, the Mini Championship and other featured tournaments.

The two championship events are spread across the back half of the series. The WPT Prime Australia Championship runs Sept. 17-22, with four starting flights beginning Sept. 17, Day 2 on Sept. 21 and a champion decided the next day. The WPT Australia Championship starts Sept. 24, runs through Sept. 30, returns for Day 2 on Sept. 27 and closes with a livestreamed final table on Sept. 30.

As covered in May, WPT had already flagged a Sydney return for this fall. That earlier announcement also said the festival would culminate with the WPT Australia Championship, alongside the WPT Prime Australia Championship and several side events.

The return comes with some recent context from last year’s WPT Australia Main Event. That event drew 600 runners, built a $1,961,000 prize pool and ended with Alan Pham beating Jordan Bautista for $364,958. WPT CEO Adam Pliska said the tour is thrilled to return to The Star Sydney and called Australia one of the world’s most passionate poker regions.

Solana-based payments processed at the 2026 World Series of Poker reached $23 million, and that worked out to about 6% of all buy-ins at the festival. On the PokerNews Podcast, Solana chief product officer Vibhu Norby said, “I don’t know if you saw, but we processed $23 million of Solana-based payments into the World Series this year.”

As reported in July, WSOP had already added Solana buy-ins through MoonPay for the 2026 series, starting in Las Vegas. PokerNews said the June rollout was billed as the first time in WSOP history that players could enter tournaments using crypto, with buy-ins available in SOL, USDC, or USDT. Solana and MoonPay said the system was built for direct checkout, with no processing fees and no conversion steps between a wallet and a tournament seat.

The integration also runs alongside traditional payment methods, so players can still use conventional buy-in routes. Solana.com said the collaboration was meant to modernize how money moves through the poker ecosystem and reduce friction for players around the world, while WSOP CEO Ty Stewart said Solana’s speed and efficiency fit the pace of the tournaments. MoonPay Commerce president Jim Walker said the partnership was aimed at meeting demand for faster, borderless payments.

It also said Solana branding was visible throughout the 2026 series and that Solana worked with WSOP to keep payment processing smooth for thousands of players in Las Vegas. The coverage added that the Main Event final table featured the first-ever $100,000 WSOP Solana Showdown freeroll, won by Rasmr for $50,000, with MinhxDynasty taking $25,000 for second. The stablecoin payout feature is slated to arrive at WSOP Paradise in The Bahamas in December, where winners can receive settlements in stablecoins on Solana.

The Potomac Summer Poker Open $3,000 Main Event spent more than an hour in ten-handed play before it got down to the final nine, and Casey Hatmaker was still in the mix. That put the Pennsylvania pro back at a Potomac Main Event final table.

Earlier in the series, PokerNews said he had qualified online, had been coming out for Potomac’s Main Events since they returned after COVID, and estimated that this was about his seventh Main Event there.

Hatmaker’s previous Potomac Main Event run came in February, when he finished sixth in the Potomac Winter Poker Open Main Event for $37,221. That was the finish he said he wanted to top.

He also reached a final table in the $1,100 NLH event at this series and went out in ninth place. Hatmaker said he started that final table seven of nine in chips, then lost with ace-queen suited against jacks. He also praised MGM National Harbor, calling the dealers and staff great, the tournaments super well run, and the casino nicer than a lot of Vegas casinos. The Pennsylvania pro has more than $1.5 million in live earnings.

Patrick Martorella opened the Potomac Summer Poker Open $3,000 Main Event final table with a double-up on the first hand and finished Day 2 in front. He bagged 3,805,000 chips, just one big blind ahead of Phong Nguyen’s 3,750,000.

According to PokerNews, Martorella was all in for 975,000 with ace-king against Nicholas Verderamo’s jacks. He hit trips on the flop and improved to a full house on the river. Justin Liberto finished third with 3,530,000, followed by Kyle Smith on 2,840,000, Jonathan Moritz on 1,610,000 and Chris Kiani on 1,290,000.

The Main Event had already been whittled down to 58 players for Day 2. Thirty-five spots were paid, the field started with 280 entries, and the festival at MGM National Harbor runs Aug. 5-17 with 23 trophy events.

Day 2 produced a mix of notable names and grind-it-out cashes. Faraz Jaka was the first bustout, while Kyle Lin, Elia Ahmadian and Christian Harder also missed the money. On the bubble, Thomas Barry sent Yabetse Wedeneh and James Morris out in the same hand, with Morris covering Wedeneh by just 1,000 chips.

Tim Pool sneaked into the money and finished 34th. Samuel Rosen, last year’s fourth-place finisher, exited in 20th. Dejan Ristov turned a $25 online qualifier into $9,232 for a 16th-place finish, while Van Noy fell in 14th and Waleed Mian busted in 12th after losing a tens-versus-ace-queen race to Liberto.

Casey Hatmaker was the first player out at the nine-handed final table. Nguyen then knocked out Kevin Kwak in eighth and Verderamo in seventh before the final six bagged their chips.

Moritz earned his seat through a BetMGM online qualifier and had already locked up $37,204 for making it this far. The eventual champion will earn $154,006 from the $756,000 prize pool.

The Potomac Summer Poker Open $3,000 Main Event got Day 2 underway at MGM National Harbor with 58 players back from a 280-entry field. Waleed Mian led the return with 1.185 million chips, a stack that was described as nearly double the rest of the field.

As covered in the Day 1b report, Mian had bagged that huge stack after the final starting flight and was the only player above seven figures. David Van Noy was second to start Day 2 with 655,000, Justin Liberto had 638,000, Kyle Lin 586,000 and Kyle Smith 565,000.

The next wave of stacks included David Kinane, a BetMGM online qualifier, with 477,000. Casey Hatmaker returned on 351,000, while Samuel Rosen and Ari Katz each had 325,000 and Nicholas Verderamo had 247,000.

The day resumed on Level 16 with blinds of 4,000/8,000 and an 8,000 big blind ante. Levels were extended to 60 minutes, with breaks after every two levels, and the plan was to play down to the final six.

Day 2 started with 35 paid spots and Faraz Jaka as the first bustout. Kyle Lin, Elia Ahmadian and Christian Harder all fell short of the money, while Thomas Barry sent Yabetse Wedeneh and James Morris out on the bubble, with Morris covered by just 1,000 chips.

Tim Pool sneaked into the money in 34th, and the cashers included Yonnas Banteamlak in 30th, Ari Katz in 28th, Michael Bohmerwald in 25th and Samuel Rosen in 20th. Dejan Ristov also turned a $25 online seat into $9,232 for a 16th-place finish.

Mian’s run ended in 12th when he lost a tens-versus-ace-queen race to Liberto. Patrick Martorella then took over from there, doubling on the first hand of the nine-handed final table with ace-king against Verderamo’s jacks before ending the night on 3.805 million.

The final-six lineup was Martorella, Phong Nguyen, Liberto, Kyle Smith, Jonathan Moritz and Chris Kiani, with Nguyen just one big blind behind on 3.75 million. MGM’s schedule has the finalists coming back to the poker room tomorrow at 1 p.m. local time, and the eventual champion is set to earn $154,006 from a $756,000 prize pool.

The WSOP Circuit Cherokee Main Event is down to its final 11 players after pulling in 1,681 entries. Curtis King leads the field with 11.2 million chips, or 112 big blinds, and the prize pool topped $2.5 million. The winner is set to collect just over $363,000.

According to PokerOrg, that turnout made the event the third-largest Main Event in Cherokee history, and it was the biggest late-summer version of the tournament. The February edition usually brings in the larger crowd.

King has not won at Cherokee before, but he has come close. He finished second in the 2016 8-Max and third in the 2023 6-Max, and he needs at least a fifth-place finish to top his career-best score of $68,000. His second-ever cash in the event came after a win at Hard Rock Tampa a few months after his first Cherokee cash.

Ryan D’Angelo is right behind him with 9.6 million chips, or 96 big blinds. His Hendon Mob history goes back to 2006, and a third-place finish in a $2,000 bracelet event in 2008, a 2016 deuce-to-seven bracelet, a Cherokee win in 2023 and a near-miss in February, when he lost heads-up in the Double Stack Closer.

Toby Boas sits third with 8.3 million chips, or 77 big blinds, and comes in fresh off a second-place finish in the Grand Finale at the BetMGM Summer Poker Festival in Las Vegas that paid $74,000 back to Gainesville, Florida. He has never won a WSOP Circuit ring, and he is trying to improve on a fourth-place finish in this event in February.

Scott Gronroos is next with 7.7 million chips and has already secured his first five-figure score, with $23,000 locked up. Kataka Eaton follows with 7.5 million chips, and all five of her live cashes since 2019 have come on the Circuit, three of them at Cherokee; her best result remains second in Biloxi in 2019 for $6,945.

Donta Moss and Wayne Harmon are next in line, with a gap before Andrew Kelsall in eighth. Caio Sobral, Jeremy Eyer and David Sathue round out the final 11. The players are due back at 12pm ET with blinds at 50,000/100,000/100,000, and Cherokee still remains the top stop in the United States.

Izzy Einsidler survived a three-way all-in cooler at the Potomac Summer Poker Open in Maryland when his pocket aces held against Henry Black’s kings and George Karmires’ queens in the $400 40/40 event.

PokerNews said the hand started with Black opening to 2,000 from the hijack at blinds of 500/1,000/1,000. Einsidler, identified as a Virginia grinder with $25,491, three-bet to 6,500 on the button, Karmires shoved from the small blind, and Black re-jammed. Once the action was capped, Einsidler was not going anywhere with pocket rockets.

The board ran A♦ 3♣ J♣, which immediately gave Einsidler a set. The 7♣ turn gave Black a flush draw, but the 2♥ river was safe and locked up a triple up for Einsidler. Karmires stood up and put on his backpack before the runout, then was eliminated shortly after the hand. Einsidler later said, “If a club would’ve come on the river, it would’ve ruined my day.”

The cooler came in a two-day $400 no-limit hold’em event with a $40,000 guarantee. At dinner break, the field had reached 197 players and the prize pool had climbed to $65,010, well past the guarantee. As covered in our earlier Potomac report on the Super Seniors event, the series had already produced a nine-way chop before this hand.

The broader Potomac Summer Poker Open runs August 5-17 at MGM National Harbor and is listed there as a 13-day series with more than $1.5 million in guaranteed prizes across 23 trophy events. Elsewhere in the room, the $3,000 Main Event had reached its final two tables.

The Arizona State Poker Championship added 1,114 entries in Day 1c at Talking Stick Resort, bringing the 2026 event to 2,881 total entries and 346 Day 2 bags. The penultimate starting flight sent 134 more players through, leaving just the final flight before Monday’s Day 2 restart.

As reported on Aug. 15, the event had sat at 1,767 entries through the first two flights, with 212 players already bagged and Gregory Brown leading the way. According to PokerNews, all 69 tables in the Arena Poker Room were dedicated to the tournament for about five hours, and the field was playing for a prize pool described as nearly $3 million with one flight still to come.

Day 1c ended with 11:18 remaining in Level 17 at blinds of 5,000/10,000. Day 2 was set to reset to 5:40 remaining in Level 16 at 4,000/8,000 unless the final flight finished faster.

Jacob McDonald finished with 1,150,000 chips, Hunter Campbell bagged 1,116,000, and Pedro Salomao and Deepa Shah each advanced with 1,041,000. Jeremy Becker also cracked the top ten with 681,000.

The bubble burst when 136 players remained and 134 were set to advance, after Eric Bunch ran his pair of nines into aces. Bunch had already bagged 50,000 in the previous flight, while Shah crossed seven figures during the stone-bubble stretch.

John Ciccarelli also picked up a big pot when his rivered set of queens beat Danny Noam. Matthew Blagg later took out Andrew Ostapchenko with aces, leaving the field at 150 players and 16 spots from the money at that point.

SCCG’s recap of the 2026 Main Event ratings said the heads-up finale between Lucas Jumalon and Lauri Saaskilahti drew 593,000 viewers for the $10 million first prize and bracelet. The seven-handed ESPN session pulled 451,000, while the first final-table block on ESPN2 did not rank among the cable night’s top 100, so Nielsen did not post a figure.

As covered in July, early reporting from PokerStrategy put the first ESPN2 episodes at 173,000 and 186,000 viewers. The return to ESPN was the first since COVID, and the three-week gap between Day 8 and the live final table was meant to build player storylines before the finish.

Those numbers have to be read against a much smaller legacy TV market. It cited Pew Research Center in saying cable subscriptions are down 40% since the 2010s, and that only 32% to 36% of U.S. households still have traditional cable or satellite service. It also pointed to the shift toward streaming platforms such as YouTube TV, Netflix and Hulu.

That shift shows up in how the WSOP is being watched. Daily final-table highlight videos on YouTube picked up nearly 1 million views, and clips of hands and interviews circulated widely on social media. Younger viewers in particular favor short clips over full broadcasts, and operators should put more weight on short-form digital content and live event execution than on legacy broadcast metrics. The 2026 Main Event field topped 9,200 players, the fourth-largest turnout on record.

Fred X. Hoban picked up a second Potomac Summer Poker Open score, winning the $300 Double Board Bomb Pot PLO for $4,908 after beating Boyi Cui heads-up. The event drew 90 runners and built a $21,600 prize pool, more than doubling its $10,000 guarantee. Cui took second for $4,111.

PokerNews described the latest result as Hoban’s second event of the series, and this one came in a bomb pot format. In bomb pots, every player puts chips in before the hand starts, and betting does not begin until after the flop.

Patrick Martorella finished third for $3,294, while Brandon Frazier was fourth for $2,162. Robert Kalteux and Lorenzo Cuison also cashed.

The format fits Pot-Limit Omaha well, since bomb pots are particularly popular in PLO.

Nicholas Persian won the $500 Freezeout at the Potomac Summer Poker Open for $8,445. He got through a 55-runner field and beat Robert Crawford heads-up in an event that produced a $22,825 prize pool.

The tournament used an early 9 a.m. start. According to PokerNews, Crawford finished second for $5,022, Aldo Frascoia took third for $3,081, Matthew Portnoy placed fourth for $2,168, and Tucker Battle finished fifth for $1,712.

Battle’s cash was notable because he was identified on the final table as the winner of the $400 Double Stack NLH event.

The Potomac Summer Poker Open runs for 13 days, from August 5-17, with a 23-event schedule and more than $1.5 million in guaranteed prize pools, powered by BetMGM Poker. The lineup includes a $600 NLH Opener with a $500,000 guarantee, a $500 Monumental Stacks event with a $100,000 guarantee, and a $3,000 Main Event with a $750,000 guarantee.

WSOP Online started on GGPoker on Aug. 16, opening a six-week run that runs through Sept. 29 and offers 33 official bracelet events, more than $350 million in prize money and $5 million in promotions. The headline act is a $5,000 Main Event with a $25 million guarantee on Sept. 21, and it is set to crown one ultimate online poker champion for the year.

As covered earlier this month, GGPoker had already laid out the 33-bracelet international schedule. The reporting differs slightly on the end date, with Pokerfuse and PokerNews placing the festival at Sept. 29, while PokerStrategy describes the bracelet run as ending Sept. 28. PokerStrategy also said the site will run more than 50 events a day, with buy-ins ranging from $100 to $10,000.

The side promotions are a big part of the package. GGPoker is putting $3 million into Continental Flipouts, which split players into four regions, the Americas, Asia Pacific, Europe and Eurasia, and can trigger freeroll prize pools of up to $250,000 for players from the same region as each bracelet winner. It is also awarding a $30,000 Super Pass to each of the 33 bracelet winners through a $1 million Super Pass Bonus, with that package sending them toward the $25,000 Super Main Event at WSOP Paradise in December.

A separate $1 million Ranking Freeroll is tied to the final Bracelet Leaderboard. Pokerfuse said fans can watch selected events live on GGPoker.tv with Jeff Gross and Phil Hellmuth on commentary, including the WSOP Online Main Event and the GGMillion$ High Roller. For context, PokerNews said last year’s $5,000 Main Event drew 5,961 players, paid $28,314,750 and was won by Benjamin “bencb789” Rolle, while Rodrigo Selouan remains the reigning GGMillion$ High Rollers champion. The country-exclusive freerolls for the top 10 nations are set for Oct. 3.

Queens of Tallinn is returning to Olympic Park Casino and Hilton Tallinn Park Hotel from August 27-30 with a larger €555 Main Event, more than 10 side events, a PokerNews-branded Deepstack, the Team Challenge and 24/7 cash games.

Queens of Tallinn was created by OlyBet Poker as the first festival of its kind in the region, and it has continued to grow year after year, attracting players from across the Baltics, Scandinavia, and beyond.

The biggest change is the Main Event buy-in, which has climbed from €350 to €555. That makes this year’s championship the biggest Main Event in festival history, while also marking the first time the higher entry fee has been used for Queens of Tallinn.

The event has been building steadily. The inaugural 2023 Main Event drew 65 entries, the field grew to 85 in 2024, and last year it reached a record 96 entries. The 2025 Main Event generated a €27,677 prize pool, and Lithuania’s Giedre Valgemäe won €5,690 after a four-way deal at the final table.

This year’s Main Event starts on Friday, August 28, with nine levels on Day 1. Players return on Saturday to play down to the final nine, and the final table is set for Sunday, August 30, with a livestream planned for the finish.

Players who do not want to buy in directly can still qualify online through satellites. The satellite path includes daily Queens Centrolls feeding weekly finals that award Main Event seats.

Beyond the headline event, the schedule includes the €200 PokerNews Queens Crown Deepstack on Saturday, August 29, at 2:30 p.m. It comes with 30,000 starting chips and 20-minute blind levels, and it debuted at last year’s festival before becoming one of the standouts on the schedule.

The rest of the festival leans into variety. PokerNews lists deepstack tournaments, bounty events, mixed games, turbo events, satellites and an open-field Win TV Series tournament.

The Team Challenge is also back as one of Queens of Tallinn’s signature features. Teams of three women score points through women-only events and cashes, and the 2026 version adds more point-scoring opportunities, free entry, staff help for players who need teammates, and a 2% Team Prize Pool shared by the top three teams.

The Asian Poker Tour wrapped up its Incheon stop on Sunday after 10 days and 106 events, with Lion trophies handed out across the schedule and the Main Event finishing at a record 1,393 entries from 807 unique players.

As covered in our Aug. 8 report on the Korea National Cup, the festival had already started strong with record numbers. According to poker.org, APT CEO Fred Leung said the series set a very high bar and that this was largely what the tour had planned, even as he described the Asian poker scene as the most competitive it has been in his 18 years in the game.

Leung said the pressure now comes not just from other poker tours, but from more aggressive schedules and from other activities competing for people’s attention. He also said APT has to keep improving and pushing new ideas rather than repeating the same old formula.

He pointed to the way different stops draw different player pools. Korean nationals cannot play in Korea, which he said can account for 30% to 40% of a field, while Incheon has a high share of Japanese players and has benefited from the growth of APT’s partnership with JOPT. Leung also said Jeju tends to work better for bigger buy-ins because it has a stronger concentration of Chinese players and is visa-free, while Taipei tends to post bigger numbers because locals can play there.

The official APT update showed the Main Event already had momentum well before the finish. By Aug. 11, after Flights C and D, the field had reached 1,177 entries with 419 players advancing to Day 2, the KRW 1.5 billion guarantee had already been cleared midway through Flight C, and the prize pool stood at KRW 2.54 billion, or about $1.8 million.

CardPlayer reported that Stephen Pang finished the job at Paradise City Casino resort, winning the APT Incheon Main Event title, the lion trophy and $293,700. The final field settled at 1,393 total entries and 807 unique players, the biggest APT main event ever held in Incheon, and the prize pool was shared by 207 in-the-money finishers.

Pang’s win was not a clean runaway. Shoumin Zhang was briefly left with just over one big blind after a count-down, then doubled four times to stay alive before Pang shut the door, and Pang, Zhang and Yifu He also earned $10,000 seats to the APT Championship main event in Taipei in November.

The tour now heads to Jeju from 25 September to 4 October, before the APT Championship runs in Taipei from 13 to 29 November.

BetRivers Poker’s Multi-State Summer Series is wrapping up today after a two-week run that packed in a lot of volume for a compact schedule. The festival featured 96 championship events, more than $450,000 in guaranteed prizes, and buy-ins that ran from as low as $3 in the Silver bracket to $200 in Gold.

As covered in late July, the series ran from Aug. 2 to 16 and was open to registered BetRivers players in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Delaware and West Virginia. The schedule also mixed in up to eight events a day, with deepstack, turbo, hyper turbo, six-max, PKO and PLO formats, plus daily satellites for players trying to qualify into the main lineup.

BetRivers also layered on extra ways to chase tickets. Its Road to MSS promotion awarded 600 tournament tickets worth $10,000 through regular MTTs, weekly draws and login-based entries, while the series leaderboards put another $10,000 in tickets up for grabs. Every champion is also set to receive a unique trophy sent to their address, so 96 players will leave August with more than just a scoreline.

In the Aug. 7 update, 38 of the 96 events had been completed, Event #1 had drawn 187 players and paid $17,297 against a $12.5k guarantee, and Event #2 paid $24,310 against an $18k guarantee.

In that same snapshot, johnynewaza_380300 led the Gold leaderboard with 136.04 points, less than a point ahead of SlotsVIP and about 12 points clear of moontime. ValueMaster led Silver with 113.88 points, with Liebro the only other player above 100 and Chip Gaines in third on 95.57.

Today’s final card is headed by the $200 Main Event with a $35,000 guarantee, alongside a $20 version that carries a $6,000 guarantee.

Lucas Jumalon turned a dominant final-table run into the 2026 World Series of Poker Main Event title, beating Lauri Saaskilahti heads-up in 17 hands and collecting the $10 million first prize. The 22-year-old from Spokane emerged from a field of 9,208 players.

As reported earlier in August, Jumalon carried the chip lead into the last duel and never gave it up. PokerNews said he went wire-to-wire at the final table, closed things out on Day 11 and described the finish as “a pure feeling of euphoria.” His rail included Brandon Sunshine and Patrick Leonard, while his college classmates chanted “GCU” and his mother, Robin Jumalon, said she was “incredibly proud of him.”

The match swung on a pair of huge pots. In one key hand, Jumalon worked a massive overbet into a spade-heavy board, then got called by Saaskilahti and tabled the winning flush. After Saaskilahti was left with only a short stack, the next all-in had him holding ace-seven against king-six, and the sixes on the flop and turn locked up the bracelet.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal said the heads-up match lasted a little over an hour at the Horseshoe Events Center, and Saaskilahti finished with $6 million for second place. The rest of the final table paid out Greg Mueller third for $3.75 million, Michael Gagliano fourth for $2.75 million, Han Feng fifth for $2.25 million, Rami Hammoud sixth for $1.75 million, Jamie Shaevel seventh for $1.5 million, Mario Boos eighth for $1.25 million and Evagoras Evagorou ninth for $1 million.

Jumalon’s age also put him in rare company. At 22 years, 4 months and 27 days, he became the second-youngest Main Event champion in history, behind Joe Cada, who won in 2009 at 21. Saaskilahti, who had been chasing a first Finnish Main Event title, still finished with a deep run and a runner-up payday. His win also gave American players four straight Main Event titles.

According to PokerNews, Mikalai Vaskaboinikau won the $50,500 Onyx High Roller Championship at Merit Royal Diamond Hotel Casino & Spa in Northern Cyprus, beating Alexey Borovkov heads-up for $450,000. The 18-entry event generated an $864,000 prize pool and paid only the top three spots, with Borovkov taking $250,000 for second and Rob Yong earning $164,000 for third.

This one came back for its final day with nine players left, and Borovkov was the chip leader on 1,289,000, ahead of Yong on 1,019,000 and Vaskaboinikau on 770,000.

The final table resumed at 1 p.m. local time with three hands left in Level 11. Blinds were 6,000/12,000 with a 12,000 big blind ante, and the table was scheduled to play 16 hands per level until there was a champion.

Vaskaboinikau almost did not make it in at all. He said he realized late registration was about to close and found he had around two minutes left to enter, then made a dash to get into the tournament.

The bubble was brutal because only three players were getting paid. Mikita Badziakouski ended up as the bubble boy when Yong called his shove and Badziakouski’s king-high lost to pocket eights on the flop, leaving the remaining trio all safely in the money and locked into at least $164,000.

Yong then doubled Borovkov before taking his shot at Vaskaboinikau, only to finish third for $164,000. Vaskaboinikau had ace-ten against king-nine and paired his ten, which sent Yong out and set up a heads-up match where he started with a near three-to-one chip lead.

Borovkov did manage to double early in heads-up play, but Vaskaboinikau chipped away again until Borovkov was short. The final hand saw Borovkov shove king-six and Vaskaboinikau call with ace-eight, then watch an ace come on the flop and another on the river to give Vaskaboinikau trips and the title.

Afterward, Vaskaboinikau called the win and the trophy “an amazing achievement” and said he does not play much, usually “maybe four or five series per year.” He also joked that his support crew was made up of “all professionals,” and added that Merit Royal Diamond’s “food for free” is a nice way to save money.

WSOP Online is starting the $100,000 Multi-Flight Extravaganza on Sunday, Aug. 16, giving players a $55 shot at a $100,000 guaranteed prize pool. The event uses 10 Day 1 flights spread across 10 days, with Day 2 set for Aug. 24.

The tournament is open to the shared WSOP Online player pool in Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. WSOP Online pools players across Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Pokerfuse described the event as one of the platform’s biggest standalone non-series offerings. The draw is the format itself: players get multiple opening flights, and anyone who misses out on one Day 1 can jump into another and keep trying until they bag a seat.

Caesars and WSOP launched WSOP Online in 2024 as an upgraded real-money poker platform, and the upgrade included multi-flight re-entry tournaments. The company later said adding Pennsylvania made it the first online poker operator to share liquidity across four U.S. jurisdictions.

The same report said WSOP Online is also pairing the event with a $400 reload bonus for existing players through Aug. 17. The bonus is triggered by a deposit of at least $10 using promo code AUG26, which gives a 100% boost on deposits up to $400.

Bonus funds are released in $10 increments for every 100 wagering points earned, and players have 60 days to clear the requirement. New players have a separate first-deposit offer, with a match up to $1,000 and as much as $100 in free play depending on the size of the initial deposit.

Tim Pool was back in the 2026 Potomac Summer Poker Open $3,000 Main Event for Day 1b, and he finished the second starting flight with 210,000 chips. The turnaround came in the event’s $750,000-guarantee setup at MGM National Harbor, where the two starting flights feed into Day 2.

As covered yesterday, Pool was eliminated from Day 1a after flopping two pair against Nicholas Verderamo’s kings and then watching a king fall on the river. That bustout sent him out of the opening flight quickly, but he was right back in the mix for the second flight.

According to PokerNews, Day 1b drew 180 players in the MGM National Harbor poker room. That lifted the combined field to 280 total entries through the two starting flights, and 58 players advanced to Day 2.

Waleed Mian finished Day 1b with 1,185,000 chips, the only stack to clear the million-chip mark. The event began with 60,000-chip starting stacks, 45-minute levels on Day 1, and 60-minute levels beginning on Day 2, with late registration open until the start of Level 13. The champion is set to be crowned at the final table on Aug. 17.

North Dakota Legislative Management is set to meet Monday, Aug. 17, at the State Capitol’s Roughrider Room. The 10 a.m. meeting includes a 10:10 a.m. look at a Gaming Commission appeal over a proposed rule on poker tournament fees.

The committee also plans to approve minutes from Jan. 14, Jan. 20, Jan. 27 and June 11, 2026. It will also choose a replacement for the vacancy created by former Sen. Josh Boschee’s resignation.

Later in the day, Legislative Council staff are scheduled to present proposed rules amendments and agendas for the House, Senate and Joint Rules for the upcoming special session at 2:45 p.m. The meeting is set to adjourn at 3:15 p.m. after miscellaneous administrative matters.

The appeal lands with a committee whose stated duties include determining whether an administrative rule is void under North Dakota Century Code Section 28-32-18 and receiving notice of an appeal of an administrative agency’s rulemaking action under Section 28-32-42. That makes it the body that can review the Gaming Commission’s challenge to the Administrative Rules Committee’s decision.

Under the current administrative code, a licensed organization may conduct poker on two occasions per fiscal year, from July 1 through June 30, and each occasion is limited to 72 hours. A restricted event permit holder may conduct poker one event per year.

For tournaments, the rule says each player must pay an entry fee and total fees per player cannot exceed $300, including the buy-in or entry fee plus rebuys, add-ons and bounties. Those fees are treated as gross proceeds, and qualifying satellite tournaments can also charge up to $300 per player. Total prizes for one poker tournament, including satellites, cannot exceed 90% of gross proceeds.

The same rule also keeps the bookkeeping tight. Recordkeeping may not be combined for multiple tournaments during the 72-hour poker occasion, a non-tournament occasion and side game are each limited to 24 hours, and non-tournament play is capped at $2 per half hour of playing time, collected in advance. The maximum single bet is $1, with no more than three $1 raises in a betting round.

Paulius Vaitekunas won the Onyx High Roller Series $10,200 Bounty at Merit Royal Diamond Hotel Casino & Spa in Northern Cyprus, taking the trophy, the $32,200 first prize and $20,000 in bounty value after a little more than three hours of play.

As covered earlier in the week when Boris Kolev won the $10,400 Mystery Bounty, the Cyprus stop was already moving through its closing stretch at the same venue.

According to PokerNews, the $10,200 event drew just seven entries. That left the full $32,200 regular prize pool for the winner, with each elimination worth $5,000. The setup was quick from the outset, with 100,000-chip stacks, 200/500 blinds and a 500 big blind ante, 20-minute levels, unlimited reentries and late registration open through Level 6.

The field began with five players and grew to seven when two late entrants joined in Level 4. Vaitekunas was one of those late arrivals, which meant he played more than an hour less than the players who had been there from the opening hand.

He scored the first bounty by busting Manig Loeser in seventh place, then watched Moussa Ahmad fall to Aleksandr Kirichenko before the break. Felipe Ketzer went quickly after play resumed, Chengyu Liao followed, and Kirichenko later slipped after Vaitekunas pulled in a substantial pot and then sent Vladas Tamasauskas out in third with a rivered three-outer.

That left Vaitekunas with a near three-to-one chip lead for heads-up play. The title ended a few hands later when Kirichenko moved all in on an ill-timed bluff and Vaitekunas called it down to secure the win.

Vaitekunas said it was probably the quickest live tournament he had played, pointing to the jump from Level 4 to Level 11 in a single session. He said his Spin & Go background helped him handle wider ranges and short-handed dynamics, and he also praised the venue and the series, even if he said the festival had not really been a success for him until the trophy arrived.

Waleed Mian turned Day 1b of the Potomac Summer Poker Open $3,000 Main Event into a runaway, bagging 1.185 million chips and finishing as the only player to clear the million-chip mark. He ended well ahead of the 38 players who survived the flight, and the second starting day pushed the event to 280 total entries.

As covered in the earlier Day 1a report, David Van Noy led that opening flight with 655,000 after 20 of 100 entries advanced. According to PokerNews, Mian did most of his damage early, knocking out three players in the first hour before closing the day by busting Justin Arnwine.

The last hand was a clean one for Mian. His ace-nine held against Arnwine’s ace-eight when the chips went in for 131,000 from the cutoff.

Kyle Lin finished second with 586,000, and his run came with some extra heat attached after he entered the Main Event fresh off winning the $1,100 High Roller the day before. He also picked up a big double-up with two pair, while Kyle Smith was next on 565,000, followed by Changfeng Fan on 488,000, David Kinane on 477,000, Yonnas Banteamlak on 440,000, and Dejan Ristov on 250,000.

Michael Bohmerwald finished with 216,000, Tim Pool had 210,000, Russ Dunlevy bagged 120,000, and Elia Ahmadian moved on with 111,000. Among the players sent to the rail were Daniel Iachan, Lucas Vergara, Aaron Pinson and Matthew Su.

The 38 survivors from Day 1b will join the 20 Day 1a finishers for Day 2 at noon local time. Play resumes on Level 16 at 4,000/8,000 with an 8,000 big blind ante, the levels stretch to 60 minutes, and the plan is to keep going until the final table is reached after play starts; the official prize pool should be announced shortly after the cards get back in the air.

Kenya Jackson won the Potomac Summer Poker Open’s $300 Women’s Event at MGM National Harbor, taking $5,444 after beating Eva Ghirmai heads-up. Ghirmai earned $3,198 for second.

The event drew 63 runners and built a $15,120 prize pool, well above the $10,000 guarantee attached to the Women’s NLH tournament. PokerNews said the final table also included Jennifer Oar in third for $2,003, Jinkie Basilio in fourth for $1,361, and Kerry Kriener in fifth for $1,058.

After a few eliminations caused the bubble to burst, Linda Swears finished seventh for $680 and Elena Currence took eighth for $544. Swears was also the player highlighted earlier in the series for a card protector with special meaning.

The win added $90,191 to Jackson’s Hendon Mob earnings, and she was described as a “local crusher in MGM National Harbor”:https://www.pokernews.com/tours/potomac-poker-open/2026-potomac-summer-poker-open/daily-tournament-highlights/chips.856305.htm’s poker room with more than ten previous victories there.

On MGM National Harbor’s series page, the Potomac Summer Poker Open was billed as a reimagined continuation of a long-standing poker tradition. The page listed 23 trophy events, 13 days of tournament action, and more than $1.5 million in guaranteed prizes.

The Women’s NLH event was listed as Event #19 with a $300 buy-in and a $10,000 guarantee, scheduled for Saturday, Aug. 15 at 2:00 p.m. The series runs through Aug. 17.

Yang Zhang defended his King’s Debut title at the King Poker Cup in Jeju, South Korea, topping a 282-entry field for $238,700. The $5,000 buy-in event generated a $1,292,300 prize pool. The festival concluded in Jeju and ran in partnership with the K Poker Cup at Les A Casino.

According to PokerNews, Zhang returned as the defending champion after winning the January edition of King’s Debut for $330,500. PokerNews described him as a WSOP bracelet winner and said the latest result was the third-largest cash of his career. It also said the win extended what it called his most productive live year in 2026, when he had already recorded $898,099 in tournament cashes.

SoMuchPoker’s earlier report said that edition drew 362 entries across three starting flights and built a $1,658,900 prize pool. It said 54 players moved on to Day 2, and a double knockout on the Day 1B bubble meant everyone who came back was already guaranteed a slightly larger share of the money.

Zhang said he had been playing poker for more than 10 years, mostly in U.S. tournaments or in Jeju when he comes to Asia. He said the key hand came when he had queen-jack and raised on the river, which changed the momentum, and he picked out Ryan Plant as the most impressive foreign player at the table.

He also said he felt “happy, but also quite calm,” and thanked his friend Hui Chao, who watched the livestream and gave advice while he was playing. Zhang said he planned to watch the video later to see whether anything in his game could be improved. SoMuchPoker also said he ranked 18th on China’s all-time money list with more than $3.6 million in live earnings.

Andrew Crookston led Day 1b with 1,278,000 chips, and the Arizona State Poker Championship later reached 2,881 total entries through three starting flights at Talking Stick Resort in Scottsdale.

As reported yesterday, the first two flights had already produced 1,767 entries, $1,767,000 for the prize pool and 212 bags. According to PokerNews, 951 hopefuls entered Day 1b, the second of four starting flights, and the final 114 players bagged for Monday’s Day 2.

Crookston, a Utah native with more than $500,000 in live tournament earnings, finished second on the overall leaderboard. Only one other Day 1b player crossed seven figures, Peter Fox with 1,106,000, while Sahib Purewal bagged 993,000 and Joseph Osterbauer finished on 915,000.

Day 1b ended with 5:40 left in Level 16 at 4,000/8,000 after hand-for-hand play began with 117 players left and 115 spots advancing. The bubble broke in a late double-knockout sequence, and the third flight added 1,114 entries and 134 more bags, lifting the running total to 2,881.

Tim Pool says he is a profitable poker player and believes he can win about $100 to $150 an hour in low-stakes cash games. PokerNews said he made the claim while talking at the 2026 Potomac Summer Poker Open in Maryland.

As covered in yesterday’s report, his Potomac Main Event run had already ended with a river king, and he was back at a cash-game table almost immediately. Pool said he has been playing since he was a little kid, but only started playing consistently about six or seven years ago.

He said around 2020 he began playing about 20 hours a week, and that he has kept that pace consistently since then. He also said he watches a lot of poker online and used to study quite a bit.

Pool usually plays $1/$2 or $1/$3. For July, he said he was tracking about 50 big blinds an hour on low stakes and felt he was doing pretty well. The profile says he first got interested in Texas Hold’em and later played online with play money on the Play WSOP app.

PokerNews says Pool is mainly a cash game player. After winning a couple grand in $5/$10 Las Vegas cash games this summer, he decided to play the $10,000 WSOP Main Event and made Day 2 before running ace-king into pocket aces and going out outside the money.

At the same Potomac stop, he also busted the $500 Opener with ace-jack against pocket nines after flopping a jack. In the $3,000 Main Event, he got all in with ace-five against pocket kings, briefly took the lead with two pair, and lost when a king hit the river. During tournament breaks, he said he often sits down at video poker and blackjack machines, and he expects to keep turning up at more tournament stops, including WSOP Paradise in the Bahamas.

Stephen Pang won the APT Incheon Main Event after a false finish that briefly had him celebrating before tournament staff corrected the table and made him keep playing. He eventually claimed the 24K Gold Lion Trophy and about KRW 411 million, with the title coming after a three-way ICM deal.

As covered in our report on Danny Tang’s sweep the day before, APT Incheon had already been producing headline results before Pang’s marathon finish.

Poker.org reported that Pang thought he had won after a river hand and began celebrating with friends and a winner’s interview. Once staff counted the stacks, tournament director Tyler Willse apologized and told the table that Shoumin Zhang still had one big blind left, or about 700,000 chips on the livestream graphics.

The correction turned the final into a real comeback test. The same report said Zhang was down 78-to-1 and would have needed six double-ups to retake the lead, but he survived multiple doubles and climbed back to 14 million chips while Pang had 42 million.

The duel kept swinging. After Zhang shoved 11 million and Pang called, Zhang came close to a fifth double-up before a ten on the river rescued Pang and turned the hand into a chop-potential spot, and play continued for 16 more hands before a 15-minute break with Zhang down to nine big blinds.

When the players returned at 500K/1M blinds on hand 149 of the day, Zhang pushed his last 8.7 million and Pang called. Pang won the flip, and the Golden Lion was finally his.

The Asian Poker Tour said the record-breaking 1,393-entry Main Event generated about KRW 3.01 billion in prize money, while SoMuchPoker said the field came from 807 unique players and called it the largest and richest international poker tournament ever held in mainland South Korea, as well as the third-largest APT Main Event staged anywhere in the country.

Pang said he had prepared for more than a year by playing online against the best players he could find. He also said he played conservatively early, then started attacking once there were five players left, and the APT site said his run was built on post-flop check-raises, well-timed bluffs and a streak of pocket queens, including a huge Day 4 pot against Nozomi Ota and queens holding against Tempei Kotani’s ace-king to move him into the lead.

Zhang finished runner-up on KRW 366.5 million and Yifu He took KRW 257 million for third, and the top three also earned a $10,000 seat to the APT Championship in Taipei.

888poker released Episode 2 of its 2026 WSOP Main Event docuseries on YouTube on Aug. 15. Titled “Shuffle Up & Deal,” the chapter follows Team888 ambassadors Aaron Barone, Ian Simpson, Lucia Navarro, Nick Eastwood and Vivian Saliba as they begin Day 1 of the tournament. PokerNews described the project as a six-part series.

As reported last week, Episode 1 set up the five ambassadors’ trip to Las Vegas. This new chapter moves from the travel story into the actual grind, starting after then-reigning champion Michael Mizrachi told the dealers to shuffle up and deal.

The early chip counts show how uneven the day was. Saliba built her 60,000-chip starting stack to 80,000 in Level 1 and then 85,800 in Level 2. Barone slipped to 52,400 before climbing to 64,000, Eastwood fell to 45,000, and Simpson ended Level 2 with 12,300 chips before crashing out in Level 3 after back-jamming ace-king offsuit into pocket jacks.

Navarro had the strangest start of the group. She entered her starting flight late after being sick in bed for three days, and the 888poker page says she skipped the first level to rest and recover. Even with that delayed start, she surged to 75,000 by Level 4 and finished Day 1 with 128,500 chips, the most on the 888poker team.

By the end of five 120-minute levels, Barone, Eastwood, Navarro and Saliba all bagged chips, while Simpson was already gone. Barone finished on 76,400, Eastwood on 56,300 and Saliba on 36,200 after sliding over the last three levels, including a spot where she laid down pocket aces on the river after the clock was called on her. Saliba also said the Main Event stands out because players can still win life-changing money without taking first place, and 888poker says the next episode arrives on Aug. 22.

partypoker.se has rejoined a poker partner lineup, bringing back a sign-up deal for new members and ongoing rewards for tracked accounts.

PokerStrategy announced the return and said new members who sign up through its link can get 100KR worth of SPINS tickets after a 100KR deposit. The bonus is for new players only, unused tickets expire after 7 days, and tracked players can earn 3 StrategyPoints for every $1 of rake they generate.

$2,000 of tournament tickets were also part of the launch. Eligibility for the raffle ran for tracked partypoker players who earned 1 StrategyPoint between April 20 and April 30, and anyone wanting a shot at a ticket had to post a partypoker username in the thread by April 30 at 23:59 CET. The winners were to be posted in the same thread after the raffle.

The partner page also said members who joined partypoker via PokerStrategy.com after 2016 and did not receive free starting capital remained eligible for StrategyPoints and future exclusive promotions. For old inactive or Play Money accounts, players could request a link by sending a ticket with their username, and partypoker would check it case by case. The page also framed partypoker as a former partner and said many members may already have signed up there, while highlighting promotions and game types including PKOs, Short Deck and Fast Forward cash games.