Italy’s Manuel Ferrari won the PokerStars EPT Barcelona €5,300 Main Event after a three-way deal, beating a 1,823-entry field and collecting €1,002,488, or about $1.16 million. Lukas van Eeden finished second and Jose Criado took third after the prize money was split.

As reported in our Aug. 28 update, Ferrari went into the final day with the chip lead. He had also stayed in front through Day 6, and the field had already been cut to six by the time the last day began.

The penultimate day began with 13 players left and at least €81,350 locked up, before a fast series of eliminations trimmed the table further. Among the notable exits, Joris Ruijs went out in ninth, Gerard Carbo finished seventh, Michael Dwyer was eliminated in fifth after losing on an aces-up board, and Xiaosheng Zheng was eliminated by Jose Criado after Criado three-bet jammed 10♠10♥ and Zheng called all-in with A♦7♦. Nicolas Chouity’s exit meant the title would go to a first-time EPT Main Event champion, and Jose Criado was eliminated in third.

The last three players then paused for a deal after Lukas van Eeden held only a small chip edge over Ferrari. The agreement left the trophy and $116,284 still to play for, while Ferrari entered heads-up with roughly a 3:2 lead and stretched that advantage to more than 5:1 as play went on.

The match ended when van Eeden shoved 27.5 big blinds with K♠6♦ and Ferrari called with A♦Q♥ in the big blind. The board ran A♥6♣4♦Q♣7♦ to end it, and the win also earned Ferrari 2,160 Card Player Player of the Year points, lifting him to 2,553 for 2026 and into the top 100 of the CoinPoker standings.

According to iGaming Brazil and BNLData, H2 Sports Bar & Poker is staging “Poker Beyond Sound” in São Paulo on Saturday (29) for about 20 hearing-impaired players. The format replaces the usual reliance on dealer calls with sign-language tools, including physical action cards for fold, check, call, raise and all-in, and the venue has Libras, Brazil’s sign language, support available for communication.

Robinson “Robigol” Quiroga, the group’s head and a partner at H2, framed the event as a space where socializing and connection come first. He said the aim is to make people feel welcome, safe and happy, with communication not standing in the way of play. The reports describe the tournament as an inclusive competition built around the specific needs of the hearing-impaired community and meant to keep the action fair and fluid.

As covered earlier this week, H2 had already been active with a high-end poker event at São Paulo’s Jockey Club. This new tournament also follows last year’s adapted event for visually impaired players, which brought together more than 25 competitors and used adapted decks of cards and chips. The reporting says competitions aimed at specific groups are part of H2’s ongoing planning in Brazil, where the club has been building this approach over more than two decades.

ACR Poker’s $15 million Dual Mystery Bounty Venoms now have back-to-back chances to reach Day 2. Saturday’s new Bonus Flight on Aug. 29 is followed by the final scheduled Day 1 on Aug. 30, with both beginning at 12:05 p.m. ET.

ACR Poker’s final weekend now gives players back-to-back chances to qualify, with the $12 million NLH Mystery Bounty Venom and the $3 million PLO Mystery Bounty Venom both carrying a $2,650 buy-in.

Players who already bagged a stack can still jump into another Day 1 and combine their qualifying chips for Day 2. Through the first seven starting flights, the NLH event had drawn 3,072 entries and sent 349 players through, while the PLO side had produced 781 entries and 91 Day 2 stacks.

The closing weekend also carries its own supporting action. Saturday’s Venom Specials guarantee $355,000, while Sunday expands to 13 Venom Specials with $2.34 million in combined guarantees. Sunday is also the last day of Venom Fever, the qualification promo that guaranteed more than 1,500 Venom seats.

Day 2 begins Monday, Aug. 31 at 1:05 p.m. ET, when the mystery-bounty phase turns on and every successful knockout pays at least $5,000. The top mystery bounty is $500,000 in NLH and $250,000 in PLO, the PLO event goes straight from Day 2 to its final table, and the NLH tournament adds Day 3 on Sept. 1 before both winners are crowned on Sept. 2 at 4:05 p.m. ET.

KPC Poker has rolled out four limited hotel-and-entry bundles for its October Jeju festival. The venue is inside Jeju Shinhwa World, and the schedule is built around the KRW 880 million guaranteed KPC Main Event before shifting later to the King’s Main Event beginning October 17.

The Premium High Roller Package is capped at 30 units and priced at ₩11 million plus $5,000. It includes a $5,000 entry to King’s Debut, a ₩5 million seat in the 5M High Roller, ₩6 million in extra tournament credit and eight nights at the Marriott. The package’s savings are ₩1.32 million.

The Signature Package costs ₩6.15 million and is limited to 50 packages. It bundles entries to the KPC Bankroll Builder, KPC Main Event and Monster Stack, plus ₩2.3 million in tournament credit and six nights at the Landing Hotel. Holders who reach Day 2 of the Main Event get one extra hotel night, and the package is listed as saving ₩476,000.

The Exclusive Package is also capped at 50 and priced at ₩4.6 million. It includes the same three core events, ₩900,000 in tournament credit and four nights at the Landing Hotel, with reported savings of ₩384,000.

For mixed-game players, the MAPS Mixed Game Rookie Package is limited to 30 players and requires a ₩3 million deposit in credit that can only be used for eligible mixed-game events. It comes with two complimentary nights at the Landing Hotel.

KPC Poker also has a separate pre-pay option for players willing to commit $70,000 in tournament buy-ins, which comes with complimentary luxury hotel accommodation for the full festival. Pre-loaded credits are non-transferable and non-refundable, and players who register and are seated before qualifying events begin get 50% off the admin fee, with eligible events marked by a gift-box symbol on the official schedule.

Debbie Lee bagged 1,141,000 chips to lead Day 1A of Event #13, the $1,700 No Limit Hold’em Main Event at Horseshoe Tunica, after the first of two starting flights wrapped up. Her stack was more than double the nearest challenger, and 12 players advanced to Sunday’s Day 2.

According to Poker.org’s live updates, the flight drew 115 entries and added $174,225 to the prize pool. The field was trimmed to 18 players to reach the money, with everyone still in line for at least $3,434, before play carried on until only about 10% of the starting field remained.

Lee’s run included the knockout that burst the money bubble, and she spent much of the day on a tear. By the time the final elimination landed in Level 16, she had the clear lead.

Several familiar names also moved on. Yuval Bronshtein bagged 526,000, Keith Canterbury 427,000, Peter Rouviere 422,000, Walker Miskelly 412,000, Dylan Lemery 398,000, and former Circuit Main Event champion Matthew Higgins 253,000.

Maurice Hawkins, Kyle Cartwright, Vincent Moscati, Luis Yepez, Hamid Izadi and reigning Horseshoe Tunica Main Event champion Preston McEwen all missed out on a bag. The official schedule lists a $400,000 guaranteed prize pool for both Flight A and Flight B, and the combined field was due back for Day 2 on Sunday.

WSOP Online has posted its September Circuit schedule, a 12-day online run that will award 12 rings and $1.5 million in guarantees across Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Nevada. The series runs from Sept. 12 through Sept. 23.

It follows the August run we covered earlier, which carried $1.4 million in guarantees. According to Pokerfuse, the September slate opens on Sept. 12 with the $125,000-guaranteed NLH Big $500, then moves to a $150,000 NLH Mystery Bounty on Sept. 13. The next two events are a $320 NLH 6-Max with a $100,000 guarantee and a $1,000 NLH High Roller with $150,000 guaranteed.

The middle of the schedule is a mix of lower and higher buy-ins. The only Pot-Limit Omaha event is a $500 PLO tournament on Sept. 16 with a $75,000 guarantee, followed by a $215 NLH Turbo PKO on Sept. 18 with the same guarantee and an $888 NLH Crazy 8’s event on Saturday that carries $125,000. The Main Event lands on Sept. 20 as a $525 NLH tournament with a $250,000 guarantee, before the series finishes with a $215 NLH event guaranteeing $100,000 on Sept. 21, a $777 NLH Lucky 7’s Mystery event guaranteeing $125,000 on Sept. 22, and a $215 NLH Deepstack with another $100,000 guarantee on Sept. 23.

Events are set to start at either 14:00 or 16:00 PT, depending on the tournament. Every ring winner is expected to receive a $5,000 WSOP Paradise package, and WSOP clarified last month that online Circuit ring winners qualify too. That package can be put toward entry in the $2,750 Mystery Bounty Circuit Championship at WSOP Paradise 2026, which is scheduled for December at Baha Mar Resort in the Bahamas.

The online Circuit leaderboard promotion also continues. Players earn monthly points from in-the-money Gold Ring finishes, with field size, buy-in and finishing position all feeding the formula, and the top eight each month will split more than $7,500 in tournament tickets. Over the full season, the yearly standings cover all WSOPC Online events, with the top four players dividing $55,000 in prizes, the top two receiving $10,000 Main Event seats and the remaining awards coming as buy-ins for eligible WSOP events in 2027.

The EPT Barcelona Main Event was cut from 13 players to six on Friday, with Manuel Ferrari still in front and Jose Criado chasing him into the final day. The six remaining players are guaranteed at least €278,950, while the winner will collect €1,370,050.

As reported in our previous update, Ferrari had already gone into Day 6 with the lead after Day 5 ended inside Casino Barcelona with 13 players left and €81,350 locked up apiece. PokerNews’ live blog said he stayed in pole position through the penultimate day and carried that advantage all the way to the finale.

Ferrari finished Day 6 at the top of the counts, and the coverage described his run as going wire to wire. He also came in with two PokerStars trophies already on his résumé, including PokerStars Open Malaga 2025 Main Event and the PokerStars Open Campione High Roller earlier this year.

Criado ended the day second with 15.7 million, after a burst of hands that pushed him above 10 million and narrowed Ferrari’s lead. He flopped quads with pocket fours, then used the same pair to crack aces and later pull off a bluff against Michael Dwyer, and he said after bagging that there was “no other option than winning the trophy and being the first Spanish winner.”

Xiaosheng Zheng sits third with 11.2 million, while Lukas van Eeden and Dwyer have 5 million and 4.5 million respectively. Nicolas Chouity is the short stack at 1.9 million, and as the only former EPT Main Event champion left he can still become only the fifth player to win two Main Event titles. Gerard Carbo’s run ended in seventh, the deepest Main Event finish of his career, while Joris Ruijs fell in ninth and Edward Pak brought Day 6 to within one elimination of conclusion.

Play resumes Saturday at 12:30 p.m. local time, with the final six set to return in Level 32 at 100,000/200,000 with a 200,000 big blind ante.

Lukas van Eeden hit a royal flush in EPT Barcelona’s €5,300 Main Event on Day 6, but he did not table the hand. After making the nuts on the river against Jose Criado, he bet, got a quick fold, and sent the winner straight into the muck instead of showing the table.

According to PokerNews, the hand came with nine players left inside Casino Barcelona in a field of 1,823 entries. Criado opened the button to 250,000 with 6♦4♦ and about 100 big blinds, and van Eeden defended from the big blind with K♣J♣. The flop fell 2♠ A♣ 10♣, giving van Eeden a royal-flush draw, and Criado’s 175,000 continuation bet got called.

The 3♣ on the turn completed van Eeden’s flush, while Criado picked up a gutter and fired 750,000. Van Eeden just called. When the Q♣ hit the river, his nut flush turned into a royal flush, and he led 650,000. Criado folded quickly.

Van Eeden said he was “flabbergasted” by making a royal flush and had never had one before. He also said the spot felt strange because he did not expect another bet from Criado, thought a small river lead might get some value, and later wondered whether he should have shown the hand.

The bigger picture still mattered around the table. Van Eeden was fifth in chips with eight players remaining, while Criado still held the lead. The prize pool reached €8,841,550, the eventual winner was due €1,370,050, and the last six players were set to return on Saturday at 12:30 p.m. local time to play the final day from Level 32, with blinds at 100,000/200,000 and a 200,000 big blind ante.

CoinPoker and PokerGO have launched a promotion that puts one player in line for a $100,000 High Stakes Poker seat in Las Vegas. The winner’s package also includes $10,000 for travel and spending money, a Las Vegas Strip hotel stay, a warm-up game, private coaching and access to the PokerGO broadcast experience.

As reported last week, CoinPoker had already been named presenting sponsor of PokerGO’s seven-day High Stakes Poker run. The new giveaway sits alongside that live stretch, which PokerGO has been airing from Aug. 25 to 31.

Entry is free, and players sign up with the code POKERGO. Weekly leaderboard periods run from Sept. 6 through Oct. 25, and qualification is based on CoinPoker cash-game and tournament activity. Freeroll entries can also unlock during the qualification window. The top finisher from each weekly leaderboard advances to an Oct. 31 final draw, where eight players will be in the mix for one grand-prize winner.

CoinPoker says the winner could end up sharing a table with Kevin Hart, Phil Hellmuth and Tom Dwan. Sportscasting described the prize as a fully covered High Stakes Poker package valued at more than $100,000, while another report noted that the leaderboard window overlaps with CoinPoker’s Global Online Poker Championship, the $50 million guaranteed series that runs through Sept. 28 and includes more than 700 events.

ACR Poker has unveiled OSS XL, a 24-day online festival running from Sept. 6 to Sept. 29. The slate spans 336 events and more than $50 million in guaranteed prize pools.

The headline package is built around three Main Events worth $5 million combined. PR Newswire’s release breaks that out as a $2.5 million event at $2,650, a $2 million event at $1,050, and a third Main Event with a $500,000 guarantee and a $66 buy-in. The two larger events share Day 1A on Sept. 20, Day 1B on Sept. 27, Day 2 on Sept. 28 and final tables on Sept. 29. The $66 event runs with Day 1 flights on Sept. 13 and Sept. 20, then Day 2 on Sept. 27, and players can also qualify through $6.60 satellites.

OSS XL adds four major multi-flight tournaments that share another $2.225 million in guarantees, led by a $1.5 million event with a $630 buy-in. That section also includes three Mystery Bounty multi-flights, with guarantees of $500,000, $150,000 and $75,000 and buy-ins down to $5.50.

The festival also comes with a $60,000-plus leaderboard competition split into High, Medium and Low buy-in levels. First-place prizes are set at $15,000, $7,500 and $4,000, and The Beast promotion will award OSS XL seats throughout September, including $1,050 and $2,650 tickets.

PokerStrategy’s recap of the same schedule also highlights a Nosebleed Week from Sept. 21 to Sept. 28, with 10 tournaments carrying buy-ins from $5,000 to $25,000. It also says ACR Poker is adjusting parts of the schedule for more U.S.-friendly start times.

Sam Soverel turned Day 3 of High Stakes Poker LIVE into a huge score, dragging a $335,900 pot after flopping top set against Nick Cassavetes’ bottom set and Dean Geistlinger’s nut-flush draw. Both runouts missed, and the hand ended with Cassavetes and Geistlinger out of the game.

The action took place at $200/$400 in the PokerGO Studio, with Soverel, Rick Salomon, Chino Rheem, Randall Emmett, Dean Geistlinger and Cassavetes all in the lineup. Cassavetes, a film director, writer and producer whose credits include Blow and The Notebook, had also appeared before on High Stakes Poker and PokerStars’ The Big Game. According to Poker.org, the Day 3 table brought a heavier dose of money and gamble after the shorter Day 2 session.

The featured hand started with an $800 straddle in front of Geistlinger. Cassavetes limped, Emmett came along, Salomon raised to $4,000, Soverel called from the small blind and Geistlinger called from the straddle, then Cassavetes called again and Emmett put in the extra $3,200.

With $20,900 already in the middle, the flop was described as looking “straight out of a film script.” Soverel made top set, Cassavetes made bottom set, and Geistlinger had the nut-flush draw, a setup the report called a “powder keg.” Cassavetes led for $7,000, Emmett and Salomon folded, and Soverel raised to $26,000. Geistlinger then moved his $81,400 stack in, Cassavetes shoved over the top, and Soverel called.

That created a $335,900 pot, and the players ran the turn and river twice. Geistlinger was still live to his flush and Cassavetes needed a one-outer, but both boards bricked. Soverel scooped the full pot, both opponents left after the hand, and he finished the night as the biggest winner with a $289,900 profit.

Manuel Ferrari goes into Day 6 of the €5,300 EPT Barcelona Main Event as the clear chip leader after Day 5 ended with 13 players left inside Casino Barcelona. Everyone still in has secured at least €81,350 from the €8,841,550 prize pool, and the winner will take home €1,370,050.

According to PokerNews, Ferrari is the only player to have crossed the eight-figure mark, finishing with 10,625,000 chips and 106 big blinds for the next day. He built that stack with a key pot against Matas Cimbolas, calling a big river check-raise bluff with second pair and moving past 10 million chips.

As covered in our Aug. 26 update, Jose Criado had already taken the overnight lead when the field reached 28, but Ferrari passed him on Day 5. Criado heads into Day 6 second with 8,950,000, while Gerard Carbo is close behind on 8,325,000.

Day 5 trimmed the field quickly from the start. Eight players were gone in the opening level, cutting the count from 28 to 20, and the list of exits included Day 2 chip leader Grzegorz Kozieja, Sebastian Malec in 21st, Alexandru Toderita in 20th, Fabricio Nociolini, Vinicius Goncalves and Eduardo Kalil, who finished 16th for €56,600.

John Juanda was the next big name to fall, taking €67,800 for 15th after Criado’s pocket fives held, and Arnaud Enselme was the last player knocked out to leave the event at 13-handed. With Juanda out, Nicolas Chouity is the only former EPT Main Event champion still in contention, and the 13 survivors return to Casino Barcelona at noon local time for Day 6 on Level 29, with blinds of 50,000/100,000 and a 100,000 big blind ante.

Rivers Casino Schenectady is bringing back the Electric City Poker Series, with the series set for Sept. 14 through Sept. 27. The fourth annual run will feature 12 trophy events, eight satellites and more than $420,000 in guaranteed prize pools across 19 unique days, with action split between the casino’s Poker Room and Van Slyck’s lounge.

According to Rivers Casino’s press release, advance Milestone Satellites begin Sept. 1, and registration for all events opens at 10 a.m. on each day of play in the Poker Room. As covered in July, BetRivers Poker also brought back its Multi-State Summer Series online.

The headline event is the Main Event No-Limit Hold ’em tournament, which runs Sept. 23-27 with a $1,200 buy-in and a $250,000 guaranteed prize pool. It will use four Day 1 flights and includes a $4,000 double-bag bonus.

The Mini Main Event is also back, with a $400 buy-in, a $100,000 guaranteed prize pool and six Day 1 flights from Sept. 14-20. Rivers says one in eight players advances to Day 2, one in eight is guaranteed to finish in the money, and the event carries a $1,500 double-bag bonus.

Beyond the two main draws, the schedule brings back Rivers Revival at a $350 buy-in with a $15,000 guarantee. In that format, players can “revive” with 20 big blinds after elimination and keep playing.

The series also includes returning tournaments such as the Ladies Event, Seniors 50+ Event and Omaha High-Low Event. New additions this year include the Monster Stack Rush Event, Double Green Chip Bounty Event, Pot-Limit Omaha Event, Black Chip Bounty Event and Deuces Wild Event.

Rivers is also layering in a leaderboard race, with the top three point earners set to collect $2,000, $1,000 and $500. Every event champion will receive an Electric City Poker Series trophy.

The satellite schedule is built to feed the Main Event, too. The $155 buy-in Milestone Satellites award one $1,200 Main Event seat for every 10 players, with two seats guaranteed in each event, while the $285 version pays one seat for every five players and guarantees three seats.

There is also a cash-game promotion running Sept. 1-18. During that window, a player who makes a two-card Royal Flush in a promotional-eligible cash game wins a $1,200 Main Event seat.

Stake Poker’s August Madness is set for Sunday, Aug. 30 at 17:00 UTC, with an $8 buy-in, an $80,000 guarantee and a 10,000-player cap, SoMuchPoker reported. The event is a one-off Progressive Knockout, so every entrant carries a bounty from the first hand.

By Aug. 27, MyPokerCoaching said the tournament was already listed in the Stake Poker lobby, with more than 500 players registered, 90 minutes of late registration and unlimited re-entry during the registration period. The lobby listing showed the event open for registration, and seats are being handed out on a first-come, first-served basis.

PokerStrategy pointed out that the arithmetic is simple at the headline level but not quite that simple underneath. A full field of 10,000 players at $8 a seat would generate exactly $80,000 in buy-ins before rake and before the bounty split, but that gross number does not by itself determine overlay because rake and the split between the regular prize pool and the bounty pool also matter. Even so, PokerStrategy said a field that lands well below capacity could force Stake to top up the guarantee.

In the PKO format, half of an eliminated player’s bounty is paid immediately and the other half is added to the winner’s own head. That means the longer someone runs, the bigger a target they become, while the regular prize pool still matters alongside the bounty action.

As covered in August, Stake marked its ninth birthday with a $90,000 poker special, and August Madness keeps that low-buy-in, high-guarantee push going.

WRGPT.org has reopened free registration for the World Rec.Gambling Poker Tournament, a play-by-email event that will run through the rest of 2026 and continue into 2027. The site describes it as the oldest free-to-play email poker tournament, reopening 35 years after it first began.

The tournament is volunteer-run and charges no entry fee. Every move is handled by email, with an automated dealer sending each player hole cards and a table layout. Players can use basic actions like betting and folding, and the format also allows more complex conditional instructions.

A single hand can take a day or several days, players have up to four hours to act, and the event itself often takes about a year to complete. The setup also includes an optional sit-out feature for people who need time off for family holidays or work trips.

According to PokerStrategy, Kevin “Kevmath” Mathers is set to take part again, and he has been playing since 2004. He called the format “so old school.”

The event dates back to 1991, before online poker existed. In a 2017 look at the tournament, PokerNews said the concept came from creator Will Hyde’s interest in postal chess, later automated by Ron Duursma, with Ken Anderson and David Widder handling administration and rulings.

That same report showed how the field has swung over time. Anderson first played in 1993, when the tournament had 195 players. The first automated event in 1992 drew about 130, and the field peaked at 1,314 entries in 2006 after the poker boom.

By 2017, participation had settled around 600 entries after ballooning into the thousands in the boom years. Anderson said nostalgia was a big part of why it kept going, comparing the appeal to vinyl, and said the tournament would continue as long as enough people wanted to play.

ClubWPT Gold rolled out multi-tabling as part of a downloadable client update, giving players the ability to open more than one table at a time. The move was framed as one of the room’s most requested features, and it arrived with a broader software shift away from the site’s web-based setup.

According to pokerfuse, the downloadable client went live after scheduled server maintenance on May 7. The rollout had been previewed in WPT ambassador Brad Owen’s vlog, which said the new client would begin arriving that day and would include multi-tabling. The number of simultaneous tables was not formally confirmed, but four tables was treated as the working assumption.

The launch did not go smoothly. Early adopters reported performance problems after the May 7 release, including tables closing mid-hand and forcing folds. ClubWPT Gold acknowledged on social media that the release was below its standards and said it would address the problems, and two days later the site carried out unscheduled server maintenance to stabilize the platform.

Even with multi-tabling in place, the room was still missing a lot of pieces. The report said ClubWPT Gold had no Omaha, no Run It Twice, no Bomb Pots, and no note-taking or player color-tagging tools. The mobile app was also described as not supporting multi-tabling for now.

The feature mattered because it changed the feel of the games. The article said multi-tabling would make the action tougher by drawing in more experienced regulars, and one Reddit user said it would turn the site into “just another online site filled with boring GTO players multi-tabling.” Another said, “Wish they’d keep it single table tbh. Games are far better.”

The comparison with Clubs Poker underlined how much ground ClubWPT Gold still had to cover. Clubs Poker was described as offering multi-tabling, a downloadable client, Omaha and mixed games, bomb pots, Run It Twice, and mystery bounty tournaments. Both sites use Sweeps Coins redeemable for cash at $1 per SC, and ClubWPT Gold was said to be available in 46 states, compared with 43 for Clubs Poker.

The room’s earlier appeal was described as its simplicity, with slower-paced, single-table action and recreational players, built on A5 Labs software used by WPT Global.

Michael Addamo returned to GGPoker’s $10,000 GGMillion$ High Roller and turned it into $423,610. PokerNews and GGPoker both called it his ninth GGMillion$ title, and both noted that he beat Pedro Neves heads-up.

The final table opened with Neves holding a slight chip lead over Guillaume Nolet, with all the other remaining players facing a sizeable deficit. GGPoker’s blog said the table opened cautiously, with nobody below 20 big blinds, and that Neves led on 105 big blinds, Guillaume Nolet sat on 103, and Addamo came in on 28 with 11.52 odds in the client. PokerListings said the event drew 216 entries.

As covered in July, Artem Osmirko had won the previous GGMillion$ title. The final-table livestream had Lucas Jumalon and Jeff Gross in the commentary box, and Gross said the table mixed “new names and old school legends.”

Addamo then worked through the field. PokerNews said he eliminated seven of his final eight opponents, starting with Nguyen Vi in ninth for $52,951 and Aliaksandr Shylko in eighth for $68,669. A pocket kings hand against Nolet pushed Addamo close to the lead, and he still had more than half the chips in play after Nolet later doubled through him in four-handed play.

The last stretch belonged to Addamo too. Xuanyi Wang went out three-handed after failing to improve against Addamo’s KJ, and Neves entered heads-up in a deep hole before briefly doubling. In PokerNews’ account, the finish came when Neves limped the button with A♥Q♠, Addamo shoved 8♣7♣, and the river paired Addamo to end it, leaving Neves second for $326,647. PokerListings, however, described the result as Addamo’s eighth GGMillion$ win and said his previous victory came in April 2024.

Johan “YoH Viral” Guilbert ended the second night of High Stakes Poker LIVE in a hurry, taking all of Andrew “Ace” Pacheco’s chips in two hands and leaving the newcomer down $150,000. The Day 2 session on PokerGO lasted less than two hours before the table was short-handed and the stream shut down.

The broader event is a seven-day live cash-game run from August 25 through August 31 at the PokerGO Studio in Las Vegas, presented by CoinPoker. GamesHub reported before the week began that it was the first time High Stakes Poker had attempted a full week of consecutive live broadcasts, and PokerGO CEO Brent Hanks called it something the series had never done before.

Poker.org reported that Wednesday’s stream brought back Sam Soverel, Jesse Lonis, Justin Gavri, Markus Gonsalves and Guilbert for the second of seven straight nights of no-limit hold’em action. Pacheco joined as the newcomer, and the day did not stay friendly for long.

In the first big pot, Lonis opened to $1,200 from up front, Guilbert flat-called, and Pacheco squeezed from the big blind looking to pick up the dead money. Guilbert then back-raised to $31,000, Pacheco shoved, and Guilbert called instantly. The players agreed to run it once with $223,400 in the middle, and Guilbert held to win the pot.

Guilbert finished the job in the next hand. After Pacheco raised and Lonis three-bet, Guilbert flat-called from the small blind. Pacheco moved his remaining $37,200 into the middle, Lonis got out of the way and Guilbert made the quick call. They agreed to a single runout, Pacheco missed again, and his stack was gone. He left after offering fist-bumps to the table, and only five players remained.

World Poker Tour has scheduled WPT Prime Lodge for Sept. 24-Oct. 12 at The Lodge Card Club in Austin, Texas. The centerpiece is the WPT Prime Lodge Championship, which runs Oct. 8-12 with a $1,100 buy-in, a $1 million guaranteed prize pool and livestream coverage from the club.

According to a WPT press release, the festival also includes satellites leading into the championship and a "Half Milly" event with a $400 buy-in and a $500,000 guarantee. The championship is positioned as another shot at a WPT Prime Trophy and a climb up the WPT Player of the Year leaderboard.

As reported in July 2025, WPT introduced the stop as its official Texas debut and listed a Sept. 28-Oct. 13 window with an Oct. 9-13 championship. The latest schedule moves those dates earlier, while keeping the same Austin venue and the same $1 million headline guarantee.

WPT also said the Austin stop is one of three festival stops it plans over the next several weeks, with action in Australia and the United States. In its announcement, Adam Pliska called The Lodge "a standout venue with an incredible community of passionate poker players" and said WPT was thrilled to bring its experience to the heart of Texas.

Garrett Adelstein said the fallout from the J-4 controversy likely cost him about $1 million to $3 million a year after he walked away from Hustler Casino Live. In a Reddit AMA on Aug. 19 that PokerListings said drew 225 messages, he also said he is probably leaving poker full-time, though he plans to keep appearing in high-stakes streamed games a few times a year in smaller doses.

As covered in an Aug. 20 report, Adelstein had already been teasing a fuller version of the story in connection with an upcoming memoir. In the AMA and related reporting, he said the complete explanation for the J-4 episode will be saved for a book and a separate video, rather than given away in the Reddit thread.

The AMA also put his personal life front and center. Adelstein said fatherhood has made him preoccupied, and that he has been working on writing and a 35-plus-hour poker course while raising children who are 3 and 1.

He also addressed the lingering fallout with Ryan Feldman. Adelstein said he is not a fan of Feldman anymore, even though he credited Feldman’s gamebuilding from 2017 to 2022 with helping create the livestream-era platform that built his profile.

The conversation circled back to the hand that changed everything. Adelstein participated in the AMA revisiting the controversial J-4 hand in which he accused Robbi Jade Lew of cheating, and he said he thought only about 10% of people would side with her. Instead, the reaction was far more split, and he said the constant criticism and hate pushed him into a dark place very quickly.

PokerNews reported that Adelstein called his public post about the dispute an unedited, meandering tweet and a colossal mistake. He also said he was basically staking his reputation that Lew cheated, while describing the aftermath as an avalanche he did not see coming.

The wider Hustler Casino Live fallout is still part of the backdrop. Adelstein said he never returned to the show after the Sept. 29, 2022 incident, and PokerNews reported that he was later banned from it. PokerOrg previously reported that Ryan Feldman and Nick Vertucci decided he would not be invited back indefinitely, even after the show had brought in Gaming Laboratories International to review the broadcast and GLI found no conclusive evidence of wrongdoing.

Adelstein’s memoir, Beneath the Cards, is due Sept. 1.

South Point Casino’s poker room in Las Vegas has switched to slide dealing, replacing the old habit of pitching cards. Under the new method, dealers slide the cards instead of tossing them, a change meant to cut the risk of exposed cards being seen by other players.

Poker room manager Jason Sanborn said the move was driven by growing concern about game protection. He said online discussion about AI, Meta Glasses, cameras and hearing devices made him think harder about what operators can do to protect the game, and he said he does not think it is reasonable to ban electronics at the table.

Sanborn also said slide dealing is the best protection against exposed cards that operators can currently use. The article says South Point adopted the change in the wake of several major cheating scandals over the last couple of years, including 2024 arrests in Europe of people described as casino gangsters who used cell phones to secretly film cards during the deal.

The report also points to other high-tech cheating methods that have drawn attention, including low-angle photos of card faces, a cell phone taped to a player’s stomach, and microscopic earpieces. Against that backdrop, South Point chose slide dealing as part of an approach to prevent exposed-card viewing and avoid a bigger crackdown on cell phone usage.

That matters at South Point because the room is not known for high-stakes action and mainly serves Las Vegas locals. PokerStars implemented slide dealing at European Poker Tour events in the year prior to the article, where the company said slide dealing keeps phones or smart devices from catching card faces during a pitched deal.

There is still a trade-off. Critics say sliding the cards slows the action at the table.

John Juanda and Sebastian Malec both survived Day 4 of the €5,300 EPT Barcelona Main Event, keeping two former champions in the hunt as the field dropped to 28 players at Casino Barcelona. Juanda finished around 1.8 million chips, while Malec bagged about 1.5 million.

As covered in our previous report on the Day 4 cutoff, Jose Criado had already taken the overnight lead and the event was down to its final 28 by the end of play.

Juanda won Barcelona in 2015 for €1,022,593, and coverage noted that no other player has won the EPT Barcelona Main Event twice. PokerNews said his Day 4 included a kings-over-queens knockout of Oleh Pritsak, before he lost a flip with pocket jacks against Albert Grane’s ace-queen.

The two reports differed slightly on Juanda’s exact finish. PokerOrg listed him 12th with about 1.8 million, while PokerNews put him 13th with 1,855,000; Malec was 17th with 1,485,000 in PokerNews’ live counts and about 1.4 million in PokerOrg’s coverage. Malec won the Barcelona Main Event in 2016 for €1,112,800 and was still in contention for another title a decade later.

Criado led the way into Day 5 with 5,045,000 chips. Gerard Carbo followed on 4,815,000 and Joris Ruijs was close behind on 4,625,000.

The tournament drew 1,823 entries and built an €8,841,550 prize pool, with €1,370,050 set aside for first place. The 28 survivors are due back for Day 5 on Thursday at 12:00 p.m. local time for another four 90-minute levels.

Jose Criado took the overnight lead in the EPT Barcelona Main Event after Day 4, bagging 5,045,000 chips as the field was trimmed to 28 players. Barbara Akemi also stayed in the hunt, finishing inside the top five with 3,445,000 and going farther in the tournament than any Brazilian woman had before.

According to PokerNews, Day 4 started with 67 players and Casino Barcelona played four 90-minute levels before more than half the field was gone. The €5,300 event drew 1,823 entries and built an €8,841,550 prize pool, with €1,370,050 reserved for the winner and €34,850 already locked up for each remaining player. As covered in our Aug. 24 report, the Main Event had already worked its way through the starting flights before this latest squeeze.

Criado's run to the top came in a huge preflop cooler against Mark Teltscher. Criado opened to 60,000 from early position, Teltscher three-bet to 180,000 from the small blind, and Criado moved all in before Teltscher snapped with his last 575,000.

Teltscher held queens, Criado had kings, and the board ran out harmlessly, sending Teltscher to the rail and putting Criado at the head of the counts. Criado qualified online and had never before cashed in an EPT Main Event.

Gerard Carbo ended Day 4 with 4,815,000, while Joris Ruijs bagged 4,625,000. Two former EPT Barcelona champions were still alive too, with John Juanda on 1,855,000 and Sebastian Malec on 1,485,000.

Akemi's run stood out even before the chip counts were tallied. Claudia Bueno and Sarah Jarry went out early in Day 4, leaving Akemi as the lone woman still standing, and the report noted that she is the first Brazilian woman to win the Sunday Million and has since added a WSOP bracelet.

Day 4 also featured a double knockout when Alexander Luciani's Broadway straight held against Hugo Soares and Simon Wiciak. Soares shoved 355,000 after Luciani made it 60,000, Luciani called after using a time bank, and the turn king locked up Wiciak's exit while the river king failed to give Soares a chop.

The last players out before the bagging phase were Teltscher, Espen Sandvik, and Joshua Boulton. Day 5 resumes Thursday, August 27, at 12 p.m. local time with four more 90-minute levels, starting on Level 25 at 20,000/40,000 with a 40,000 big blind ante.

H2bet is the exclusive sponsor of H2 Unique Celebration, a poker-focused event set for 26 and 27 August at the Iulia restaurant inside the Jockey Club of São Paulo. The program mixes poker, fine dining, entertainment and high prizes, and the venue is listed as Av. Lineu de Paula Machado, 1263.

According to BNLData, the H2 Unique Celebration tournaments are part of H2 Unique, which is described as an exclusive, high-end poker circuit built around high roller tournaments, cash game tables and complete experiences with gastronomic attractions and unique venues. At the São Paulo stop, participants will compete for a guaranteed prize pool of R$ 500 in two tournaments, and champions will receive a specially designed trophy in addition to the prizes.

The event also includes a dedicated menu with cocktails, dinner and a selection of drinks.

The sponsorship is being framed as part of a wider pattern for H2bet, which the source links to other appearances across sports and entertainment. Those include the Porsche Cup in motorsports, the Salvador Carnival, themed parties in Fernando de Noronha and Campos do Jordão, venues such as Vila JK in São Paulo, sports broadcasts on CazéTV and N Sports, and Atletico, where H2bet is described as the main sponsor in what the report calls the largest sponsorship deal in the history of Minas Gerais football.

H2bet has also been a key part of the brand’s mix. H2bet became the main sponsor of the Brazilian Poker Championship, described as the country’s main poker circuit, held in several stages through the year in different cities. The report says the group has been active in poker since its founding 20 years ago and has worked to grow the game into a mind sport and lifestyle.

H2’s footprint also includes physical poker clubs in São Paulo, Campinas and Curitiba, a strong digital presence, and a soon-to-open unit in Belo Horizonte.

According to PokerStrategy.com, Alex Theologis has released Practical ICM Mastery on Run It Once. The course is presented as a top-to-bottom blueprint for applying Independent Chip Model concepts across every stage of a poker tournament, with coverage of early and middle-stage play, bubbles, after the bubble, and final tables.

The training also digs into risk premium and post-flop ICM. Alongside the core material, the release includes a private Discord community and an ICM quiz to test understanding.

Live training sessions with Alex are set to start next month, and the launch price is 20% off.

The write-up also says Theologis has released a number of books on ICM. It describes him as known for ICM in extreme formats and as one of the greatest PKO players in the modern game, and says he was the first feature in GGPoker’s ongoing Online Poker Millionaires documentaries.

Recent strategy pieces have put the same tournament spots under the microscope. PokerCoaching.com says ICM pressure is essential at the money bubble and peaks as the final table approaches. It also says strategy should loosen a little in the early money after the bubble, then tighten hard near the final table, where protecting a stack can be worth real dollar EV even when it costs chip EV.

GTO Wizard’s shallow-stack examples show how sharply ICM can change ranges. In one bubble spot with 8 big blinds, a shove range fell from about 30% in ChipEV to 12% under ICM, with a risk premium of 18.9%. In another bubble example with 4 big blinds, the risk premium was 19.2%. The same article says final-table examples can look very different, with risk premiums as low as 8.3% for UTG with 8 big blinds and 1.6% for UTG1 with 13 big blinds.

Universal Poker offers a $1,000-guaranteed freeroll on PartyPoker for eligible players who sign up through Universal Poker. The tournament is completely free to enter, and the prize pool is paid entirely in tournament tickets rather than cash.

According to PokerNews, entry is limited to players whose PartyPoker accounts are tagged to Universal Poker. Registration is already open in the PartyPoker client, and eligible players can find the event in the tournament lobby by searching for “Universal” after clearing any other filters.

The client lists the event as “Universal $1,000 Freeroll.” To register, players need to click “Register for $0” and enter the password. The password will be shown to eligible players on Universal Poker shortly before the tournament begins, and anyone whose account is not tagged yet is directed to the Universal site to follow the steps and claim entry.

The freeroll starts with 50,000 chips and pays the top 27 finishers. The biggest prize is a $250 Anniversary Series Main Event Ticket, while second place gets $164 in tournament entries and third place gets a Sunday Party $109 Ticket. Prizes continue through 27th place and include Anniversary Series tickets, Sunday Party satellites, and Phase 2 tickets. Because every prize is issued as a ticket, none of them can be turned into cash or P$, and the tournament is set for Sunday, August 30 at 20:00 BST.

Pierre Neuville, the Belgian poker legend, died at 83 after a long battle with prostate cancer. Earlier in the month of his death, he said he wanted to "continue living as long as possible."

Neuville reached seventh place and earned $1,203,293, his first and only seven-figure score. He had sat down fourth in chips.

Card Player reported that Neuville bagged the lead after Day 5 with 7,105,000 chips, and that the tournament had been pared to 69 players by the end of Day 5. AP, via GoErie, later reported that he went out in seventh place after moving all-in against Joe McKeehen with ace-jack suited. The same report said the 2015 Main Event drew 6,420 entries before it reached the final seven.

PokerNews had previously described Neuville as the oldest player at that final table, at 72, and said he carried the nickname "The Serial Qualifier" after making 23 consecutive EPT Main Event qualifiers. He also finished runner-up in European Poker Tour Main Events in 2009 and 2012, and twice missed out on a WSOP bracelet with second-place finishes in the $5,000 six-max event in 2014 and the $1,500 six-max event in 2016.

Neuville was born on January 2, 1943, in Montigny-le-Tilleul, Belgium, discovered poker in 1957, and played regularly while studying at Universite Libre de Bruxelles from 1963 to 1969. After graduating, he designed a board game named after Eddy Merckx, built a toy company in 1969, sold it to Hasbro in 1982, spent the next decade as vice president, started a consulting service in 1993, and fully retired in 2008.

After retiring, Neuville pursued poker more seriously. In May 2025, he revealed that he had been diagnosed with late-stage prostate cancer, and PokerNews said his last public appearance in a live poker event came during the 2025 PokerStars Open Namur festival.

Octopi Poker has brought Thomas Boivin in as both Head of Content and Head of Octopi Academy.

According to Poker.org, Octopi and Boivin pitched the academy as an attempt to revolutionize poker coaching through content. Boivin described it as the new branch of Octopi Poker where the learning “revolution” would happen, built around gamification, leaderboards, quizzes, trainers and drills as part of a holistic system.

He also said Octopi had the highest ambition in the coaching space and that poker coaching had been much the same for years. Victoria Livschitz said she wanted to reinvent the whole thing, and that Boivin was her number one choice to help build the academy from scratch.

As covered in July, Octopi had already relaunched Boivin’s Beyond The Solver as a self-paced course after revising the syllabus and adding new material. The updated version was available for $999, and the course offered 11 blueprints.

Cardplayer Lifestyle noted that Boivin already had coaching experience through his French platform PurePoker. It also traced a résumé that began in 2011, with a 2016 MSPT Main Event win in Las Vegas for $352,000, a 2017 Aussie Millions 6-max title for $88,000, and a 2025 that produced 32 cashes, 18 final tables, two runner-up finishes, two titles and $8.4 million in winnings. Poker.org put his 2025 tally at more than $8 million, with three seven-figure cashes totaling more than $5.5 million, enough for 18th place on The Hendon Mob’s 2025 Money List.

Boivin’s first Octopi Academy course is Beyond the Solver: 15 Blueprints to Exploit Common Population Mistakes.

New South Wales has unveiled a wide gambling reform package that targets both harm reduction and marketing limits. The plan covers a statewide exclusion register, mandatory facial recognition at gaming-room entrances, third-party exclusions, tighter ad rules, a ban on VIP gaming programs, and a push toward account-based play.

According to a NSW government ministerial release, the package was presented as delivering on a key election commitment and was shaped by the state’s Independent Panel for Gaming Reform, along with input from industry, harm minimisation groups, stakeholders and privacy experts. The government also said it is responding to findings in several reports, including the Roadmap for Gaming Reform and a Crime Commission inquiry into money laundering through electronic gaming machines in hotels and clubs.

The state said it will invest $95.2 million over four years to implement the changes, with an extra $20 million going to the Responsible Gambling Fund over the next two years. The release cited the NSW Gambling Survey 2024, which found 3.1% of adults were experiencing moderate-risk gambling and 0.9% were experiencing high-risk gambling.

The biggest structural change is the statewide exclusion register. It is meant to replace a fragmented system where self-exclusion was handled venue by venue and enforcement often depended on staff memory and manual checks.

Under the new plan, exclusions will be backed by mandatory facial recognition at the entry to gaming rooms. The register will cover every hotel and club with gaming machines, and the system is due to be introduced in 2028.

A third-party exclusion scheme will also be added. That gives family members, friends, venues and police more ways to trigger exclusions for people considered at risk, including cases linked to criminal activity.

The package also aims to shrink the machine footprint over time. NSW currently has about 87,000 poker machines across 2,100 clubs and hotels, and the forfeiture rate when gaming machine entitlements are traded will rise from one in three to one in two, so one entitlement is removed for every two that change hands.

A sinking cap will lower the statewide ceiling on entitlements as they are withdrawn from circulation. The government said it is also working toward account-based play and will upgrade the Central Monitoring System over the next two years to support that shift, while acknowledging that much of the current machine infrastructure still relies on legacy technology.

Marketing rules are being tightened too. Gambling advertising will no longer be allowed on NSW government or local council-owned assets, betting service providers will need express consent before direct marketing by phone, email or text, and affiliates and influencers will face new transparency rules with commission limits on higher-risk products. The package also bans VIP programs tied to gaming and promises a state strategy to address online gambling harm, alongside tougher penalties for illegal operators.

bestbet Jacksonville is set to host the $5,000 WPT bestbet Scramble Championship from Sept. 4-9, with a $1 million guaranteed prize pool. The No-Limit Hold’em event will finish with a livestreamed final table on Sept. 9.

WPT’s festival coverage says the surrounding schedule began Aug. 20 and runs through Sept. 9. The same coverage says the festival mixes different formats and buy-in levels. PokerNews also said players can satellite into the WPT World Championship, a season-ending Las Vegas series in December.

PokerNews described the WPT bestbet Scramble as an annual destination event, and said the tournament’s history is reflected on the Mike Sexton WPT Champions Cup trophy displayed at bestbet.

Connor Rash is the defending champion after winning $315,530 and outlasting 327 entrants in 2025. Nick Yunis won the event in 2024 and earned $310,079, while earlier winners listed in related coverage include Frederic Normand, Tyler Paterson, Jared Jaffee and Noah Schwartz.

The festival is not limited to the main championship. Other events on the schedule include a $1,700 No-Limit Hold’em Mystery Bounty, a $300,000 guaranteed tournament starting Aug. 27, and a 32-player $800 Heads-Up No-Limit Hold’em event on Sept. 2. Tournament action will play down to six on Sept. 8 before the final table returns for the livestream the next day.

kingsluvan won 888poker’s $80,000 Mystery Bounty Main Event, banking $10,549 after a final table that was done in less than 75 minutes, even with the scheduled break. The $109 buy-in drew 721 entries and 153 re-entries, so the event overlaid again and 888poker still did not get to the reduced $80,000 target it set in late July.

As covered in late July, getoverhere had already taken down the same event after a slight overlay. According to PokerNews, this week’s final table was also heavily skewed toward one country, with players from Ukraine filling five of the eight seats.

The action started slowly. There were no eliminations for the first 25 minutes, until Why_a_King went out, and then three more players busted within the next 10 minutes. Travel99 eliminated Dimitr1us in an ace-nine versus ace-five clash where Travel99’s nine kicker held, and then sent TitovSej out in sixth place with eight-five offsuit against queen-seven after a five hit the flop and turn.

Travel99 also knocked out Antrage in a blind-versus-blind hand, calling king-ten with pocket nines and making a full house while Antrage made a straight. Kingsluvan then made the next big move, tank-calling Ra4ok123’s 19 big blind shove with pocket eights, flopping a set and fading the straight outs to reach the last three.

At three-handed play, the average stack was more than 51 big blinds, so there was still room for maneuver. After the scheduled break, kingsluvan raised with ace-king and called a 31 big blind shove from SHADY_XV, who missed and finished third. Travel99 disconnected before that hand, did not manage to reconnect, and kingsluvan went into heads-up with a two-to-one chip lead before Travel99 was eventually blinded out.

The next listed $109, $80,000-guaranteed Mystery Bounty Main Event is set for 6 p.m. BST on 30 August, with satellites starting from $0.10.

Martin Hummel completed a 76-hour online poker marathon on GGPoker, pushing past Sergio García’s 49-hour online mark by 27 hours. He finished on his 44th birthday after originally planning to stop at 72 hours.

15m.com reported that the bid began on Aug. 14, was streamed live on Hummel’s PPMH00 Twitch channel, and kept going for four extra hours once he hit his target. The report said witnesses appeared during the marathon and took turns every four hours. Guinness officials constantly monitored Hummel’s attempt to ensure he was always at the virtual felt. The result is still awaiting Guinness verification, and García remains the official online poker record-holder for now.

During the marathon, Hummel mixed MTTs, Rush & Cash and Mystery Battle Royale games. He played 65 MTTs, made the money in 16, and won one after a three-way deal. He spent about €900 on buy-ins and finished with about €1,000 in cashes, for a profit of €100.

The stream also raised €600 for Stichting DierenLot, an animal welfare charity. Hummel has chased this kind of milestone before, including a 48-hour online poker run in 2021 that once held the Guinness mark before García took it with 49 hours in 2023.

Ari Engel won the $1,300 WPT Cambodia Championship at NagaWorld in Phnom Penh, beating a field of 391 entries in the No-Limit Hold’em event and taking home $91,444 after a heads-up ICM deal with Adi Agarwal. Once the money was settled, the two ran a single flip for the trophy, and Engel came out on top.

PokerNews reported that the event built a $500,000 prize pool. As part of the deal, Engel also locked up a $10,400 seat in the WPT World Championship, while Agarwal secured $81,610.

Michael O’Neill had entered the day as the chip leader and applied pressure throughout the final table. Bekzhan Rasulov went out first in ninth, Aleksei Zhukov finished eighth, Benhur Ybarsabal was seventh, Mangalam Seksaria sixth, Rindra Norodom fifth and Hendrik Uibo fourth before O’Neill bowed out in third for $43,811.

SoMuchPoker said Engel entered the final day with just 18 big blinds and that the day lasted about six hours. A key swing came when he was all in against O’Neill with pocket queens, picked up a river save and doubled to stay alive. He later climbed into the chip lead in three-handed play, then won a massive pot against O’Neill with the better kicker to reach heads-up play.

Engel and Agarwal then went back and forth, with Agarwal climbing to about 5.8 million chips before they checked the numbers and agreed to the ICM payout. The event also closed out WPT Cambodia: Passport to the World Championship, a 13-day festival at NagaWorld that featured 70 events and more than $1 million in guarantees, and Engel said he would love to come back for the January series.

The win pushed Engel’s recorded live tournament cashes to just over $10.1 million. Poker.org noted that his run of cashes stretched back more than 19 years, to a 40th-place finish in the 2006 WPT Foxwoods Poker Classic, and that he had already tied Miami John Cernuto at the top of The Hendon Mob’s all-time cashes list.

As covered in August, Jumalon won the 2026 WSOP Main Event, beating Lauri Saaskilahti heads-up for $10 million and his first WSOP bracelet.

He won the $10,000 no-limit hold’em World Championship in a field of 9,208 entrants at the Horseshoe Events Center. The 22-year-old Spokane resident led from start to finish at the three-day final table, and the heads-up match lasted a little over an hour. Saaskilahti earned $6 million for second place.

The finish came down to a big river spot. Jumalon overbet 40 million chips on a four-ace-king-jack board with three spades, then fired 180 million after the river brought the queen-high flush. Saaskilahti said he thought the turn bet represented a strong hand and that the river spade meant either the nuts or complete air.

A separate profile added some of the background behind the run. It said Jumalon was hospitalized for nearly three months after birth, was the youngest of five brothers, and began taking poker seriously around age 14 or 15. He later said he got very into the game, studied hard, and felt ready to play with the big boys by 18. The profile also said his father ran Bulldog Rooter and worked two full-time jobs, while his mother went back to school at 36 to become a registered nurse.

Daniel Negreanu said his Canada travel plans are booked, with Montreal first for the WSOP Super Circuit at Playground before he heads to Vancouver to stream the GGPoker WSOP Main Event and other events. He also said a September reality-show filming opportunity fell through and may come back next year. The eight-time WSOP bracelet winner said he is still hoping to win his first WSOP Circuit ring, and he described the trip as one of his last poker stops before becoming a father.

As covered on Aug. 20, the first Canadian WSOP Super Circuit stop is set for Aug. 26 through Sept. 12 and brings 18 ring events plus more than CA$14 million in guaranteed prize money. GGPoker places Playground in Kahnawake, Quebec, while PokerStake described the destination as Montreal. GGPoker also called it the first WSOP Super Circuit event in Canada and the first of its kind in North America.

The marquee event is the CA$5,000 Main Event with a CA$10 million guarantee. PokerNews said it uses six starting flights across the first weekend of September, and GGPoker added that the festival includes a Sept. 2 meet-up game reserved for Main Event qualifiers, with Negreanu and Michael Mizrachi among the players they can face.

The schedule stretches from $500 buy-ins up to a $25,000 Super High Roller, with formats including no-limit hold'em, progressive knockouts, pot-limit Omaha and Mystery Bounty. Other headline events include a CA$500,000-guaranteed Mini Main, a CA$2,300 Super Circuit Championship and a CA$400,000 Mystery Bounty with three Day 1 flights between Aug. 29 and 31.

Lucas Jumalon says he wants to get involved in the legal side of poker and help bring online poker back to the United States completely. He framed that as part of a bigger push to keep the poker dream alive for younger players, and said the goal would give them hope that the game still has a path forward.

In an interview with Poker.org, Jumalon said he wants to work on “the legalities behind the game” and try to restore online poker across the country. The outlet said he cast that goal as a response to roadblocks over the past 15 years, including the limited availability of online poker across the U.S.

Jumalon also said that “people have kind of given up on the ‘poker dream’,” but that it is still “alive and well.” He said his own run showed that it is possible if a player is willing to put in the time.

He was just as direct about what he thinks the game needs. Jumalon said poker has been needing someone to “take the reins” and said it needs more “juice and oomph” to get it over the hill. He also said his main priority is still to be the best poker player he possibly can.

As reported in August, Jumalon followed his Main Event victory by joining Poker Royalty as an ambassador. PokerNews said the company will represent him across sponsorships, endorsements, appearances, licensing and strategic brand partnerships, and quoted him saying he wants to be “a real ambassador for this game.”

PokerNews said Jumalon went wire-to-wire at the 2026 WSOP Main Event final table, and he was a 22-year-old chip leader when the finale began. The same coverage said he closed out the title run without ever giving up that lead.

BetRivers Poker’s Multi-State Summer Series ended with Daniel “DrDadPoker” Schill taking six Championship events and walking away with six trophies. The 15-day festival paid out $581,807 from 18,700 entries, which was well above the guarantees on offer.

As covered when BetRivers brought the series back in July, the 15-day festival ran from Aug. 2 to 16 for players in Pennsylvania, Michigan, West Virginia and Delaware, with 96 Championship events, more than $450,000 in guarantees, and buy-ins from $3 to $200.

Schill’s streak started on Aug. 6 with MSS #15-S: $20 Deepstack, where 202 entries built the $3,500 guarantee and he won $734. He followed that with the $5 Fight Club PKO, the $100 Weekend Wrap PLO, and the $5 Sprint 6-Max, giving him four wins in four consecutive days. A week later, he added the $3 Turbo PLO PKO and the $5 Series Saver. Across the six victories, he collected $3,418 in prize money.

The bigger events also drew plenty of action. The $200 Main Event pulled 214 entries and built a prize pool of more than $40,000, while the $20 Mini version beat its $6,000 guarantee with 360 entries. The opening-day $200 Summer Stack brought in 130 runners and paid $24,310, the $200 Deepstack PKO drew 122 entries for $22,814, the $100 Sunday Main hit 240 entries for $22,200, and the $10 Sunday Main drew 396 entries for $3,623.40. Eleven events still finished with overlays, but the series overall crushed its guarantees by almost 30%.

The festival also ran Gold and Silver leaderboards, with points based on cashes and a player’s best five results determining the standings. Vadym topped Gold with 224.10 points and $1,400 in ticket prizes, while Schill led Silver with 227.93 points for $400; Liebro finished second in Silver with 202.11 points for $250. The top 20 Gold finishers split $8,500 in ticket prizes, and the top 25 Silver finishers split $1,500.

Schill, who streams on Twitch and YouTube, is one of three poker streamers representing BetRivers. According to The Hendon Mob, he has almost $230,000 in live tournament earnings, and he also won three titles during BetRivers’ Spring Poker Championship earlier this year. Pokerfuse said his six-title haul may be a record for a single player in one online series, although it could not confirm whether anyone had done it before.

Phil Hellmuth said Big Al Emerson died over the weekend, and he paid tribute to the Wisconsin poker figure as an old friend. In the tribute, Hellmuth also credited Emerson with inventing Archie, a mixed game he described as a high-low split format with special qualifiers.

According to PokerNews, Hellmuth said he first met Emerson in a $10-$20 limit hold’em game at the Stardust Casino in Las Vegas in 1986. Emerson lived in La Crosse, Wisconsin, while Hellmuth was based in Madison, and Hellmuth said Emerson was the first professional poker player he befriended.

Hellmuth said the two hit it off right away, and that Emerson later introduced him to some of the biggest poker players and biggest poker games in Wisconsin. He said, “With Big Al, I had found a professional poker player I could hang out with, learn from, and observe.”

He also remembered Emerson’s personality in vivid detail. Hellmuth called him “the life of the party,” said he gave “plenty of action,” and wrote that no one minded losing their money to him. He described Emerson as a 6-foot-7, 320-pound man with light-brown hair, brown eyes, and a pleasant personality.

PokerNews said Emerson made a living playing poker for 35 years before shifting to “greener pastures” and beginning to book “a bet or two.” Hellmuth said Emerson played poker every day for decades, then kept playing two or three times a week in Phoenix for the last 25 years until the very end. The same report said The Hendon Mob listed Emerson with $237,637 in lifetime tournament earnings, including a runner-up finish in the 1985 WSOP $1,000 no-limit hold’em event, 14th in the 1990 WSOP Main Event, and fifth-place finishes in two 1996 WSOP events.

Hellmuth said Emerson confronted him after he bluffed off his stack to Johnny Chan in the 1988 WSOP Main Event, then was there to celebrate when Hellmuth won the 1989 Main Event. A separate Card Player article described Archie as a five-card triple-draw high-low split game that originated in the Phoenix area, adding that the name honors a gentleman who had a rough start when it was first introduced.

BetMGM Poker has put the Big, Big Series on the calendar at Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in Atlantic City, with more than $6 million in guaranteed prize pools and a $5,300 Championship that carries $3 million guaranteed. In BetMGM Poker’s blog, the series is framed as a live tournament set “for players, by players,” and it is described as a celebration of the one-year anniversary of the BetMGM Poker Tournament Room at Borgata.

As covered in July, BetMGM Poker also powered Borgata’s Summer Poker Open, which ran with more than $4 million in guarantees. The new promotion is presented a little differently across the posted materials: the blog calls it a 10-day series from Sept. 13-22, while the event schedule keeps the Championship running into Sept. 23.

The Championship is the clear centerpiece. It starts with Day 1A on Sept. 19 at 12:15 p.m., followed by Day 1B on Sept. 20 and Day 1C on Sept. 21 at the same time. Survivors return for Day 2 on Sept. 22, registration stays open until the start of Day 2, and the event is scheduled to play into Day 3 on Sept. 23.

Before that, the $2,200 Big, Big Kick Off brings the festival’s first seven-figure guarantee. It has $1 million guaranteed and two starting flights on Sept. 14 at 11:15 a.m. and 6:15 p.m., with players who survive either flight coming back the following afternoon to play for the prize pool.

The lineup also reaches beyond the main hold’em events. The schedule includes the $1,100 Big, Big Welcome: H.O.R.S.E. on Sept. 13 with a $25,000 guarantee, two days later E-Tay’s $2,500 Big, Big 9 Game Mix with $150,000 guaranteed, and the $2,200 Big, Big Pot Limit Omaha (8 Max) on Sept. 18 with a $200,000 guarantee.

Higher-roller action is built in as well. The $10,200 Big, Big Baller has a $500,000 guarantee and its entry fee covered by BetMGM Poker, while the $2,200 Big, Big Borgata Mystery Bounty also guarantees $500,000. The schedule adds a $1,100 Big, Big One Day: Bankroll Builder with a $100,000 guarantee, a $1,100 Shot Clock Turbo with another $100,000, and the $5,100 Big, Big BetMGM Series Saver Survivor plus the $1,100 Big, Big Bye Finale on Sept. 22.

Players can also qualify into the schedule in several ways. BetMGM Poker says online qualifiers run from Aug. 18 through Sept. 16 for players in Michigan, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, with additional qualifiers Sept. 17-20 in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Borgata is also offering a Big, Big Stay & Play Bonus, which packages 10 nights for $999 plus tax and resort fees, with Gold+ MGM Rewards members getting the resort fees waived, and the offer must be booked by Aug. 29 using code BIGBIG while supplies last.

PokerStars on FanDuel is rolling out a new Nightly Stars Leaderboard that pays $2,500 in tournament tickets each week. The promo runs for two weeks, Aug. 24-29 and Aug. 31-Sep. 5, and it is tied to the operator’s daily Nightly Stars schedule.

Players earn one leaderboard point for every $1 they cash in qualifying Nightly Stars tournaments. Because Nightly Stars runs Monday through Saturday at 6:40 p.m., the promo gives players six chances per week to build a score, and the top 73 finishers each week will receive tournament tickets. Those tickets expire 21 days after they are issued, and players can check their standings in the Leaderboards section of the poker client.

As covered in late July, PokerStars on FanDuel had already revamped Nightly Stars with deeper stacks, later late registration and bigger guarantees. The daily $100 tournament doubled its starting stack from 5,000 chips to 10,000, late registration now closes at the 400/800 blind level, and guarantees were lifted to $25,000 on Tuesdays and Thursdays and $22,500 on the other days.

The leaderboard does not apply to the smaller mini versions of Nightly Stars, which are aimed at smaller bankrolls. The report also said players who win tickets to the 2nd Chance All In Shootout are registered automatically, so they do not need to be logged in to participate.

PokerStars exclusively on FanDuel is available in Michigan, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, after FanDuel described the combined platform as a way to merge liquidity across markets and deliver bigger games and larger prize pools. The new leaderboard is another promotion built around that same nightly tournament schedule, and the report said an extension beyond the initial run is possible, but there is no guarantee.

Thomas Eychenne added another big Barcelona score on Aug. 23, winning the PokerStars Open High Roller after topping a 1,551-entry field and beating fellow French player Virgile Turchi heads-up. Reports varied on the first-place payout, putting it at $688,200, $683,698, or €589,395.

TightPoker reported that Eychenne was in front once the event reached the nine-handed final table. He first cracked the final table by winning a key flip against Zdenek Zizka, then watched David Djian and Hak-Hyun Lee exit in eighth and seventh.

From there, Eychenne kept applying pressure. He eliminated Christian Kaufmann in fifth place and retook the chip lead from Turchi, then saw Marwan Walid Salamoun go out fourth and Lars Tungel fall in third. Different reports described his heads-up edge as better than 6:1 or 6.5:1, and the title was sealed on the first hand when Turchi moved all-in with ten-nine and ran into pocket queens.

The runner-up payout also differed by outlet, with figures of $433,200, $430,360, or €371,000. Card Player said the win gave Eychenne 1,620 Player of the Year points and lifted him to 3,027 total, leaving him within striking distance of the top 50 in the CoinPoker standings.

The result continued a strong run for Eychenne on the European circuit, coming about a year after his EPT Barcelona Main Event triumph. TightPoker said he later added more than $500,000 across two final-table runs in late 2025 and earlier this year, including the WSOP Europe Main Event and the EPT Monte Carlo High Roller, while Card Player noted that this was his first title and sixth final table of 2026. In the last year, one report said, Thomas Eychenne won over half of the $6.34 million in live tournament earnings he had amassed in his career.

Farbod Nazari won the 2026 WPT Cyprus Championship at Chamada Prestige Hotel & Casino, taking down the $3,500 Main Event for $368,900. The score also included a $10,400 seat to the season-ending WPT World Championship at Wynn Las Vegas, and it put Nazari’s name on the Mike Sexton WPT Champions Cup.

The event drew 520 entries and built a $2 million prize pool. The top 65 finishers got paid.

According to World Poker Tour live updates, Day 2 added 122 entries to push the field to 520, and after 10 levels only 45 players were still in the hunt. Earlier in the event, Day 1B had reached 269 total entries, with registration still open through the end of the first break on Day 2.

By the time the tournament reached its finale, only six players remained. PokerNews said Mihai Trofim went into the final table as chip leader with 6,225,000, while Sergiu Cornea had 1,325,000. SpadePoker reported that Nariman Yaghmai finished 9th for $36,000 and Bernardo Neves was the final table bubble boy in 7th for $56,500, leaving the six finalists all locked up for at least $73,000.

Three-handed play ended with Weiran Pu, Chadi Rizk, and Nazari. Nazari called Pu’s all-in when Pu was drawing dead, sending Pu out in third for $175,000 and giving Nazari a 16,350,000 to 9,575,000 chip lead over Rizk heads-up.

The finish came in back-to-back big pots. On hand No. 114, Rizk got a runner-runner straight to double and deny Nazari the title. On hand No. 115, Rizk limped, Nazari raised, and after Rizk shoved for 7,950,000 on the flop, Nazari snap-called with a six-high straight and held through the turn and river bricks.

Rizk finished second for $238,000, while Pu took third, Mihai Trofim finished fourth for $130,000, Sergiu Cornea was fifth for $97,000, and Sami Ayyoub placed sixth for $73,000. CardPlayer said the win was Nazari’s biggest live score, topping the $22,581 he earned for 33rd in the 2025 EPT Prague Main Event, and it earned him 1,260 points in the 2026 Card Player Player of the Year race.

PokerNews put Nazari’s lifetime live earnings at $474,991 after the win, while CardPlayer said the Cyprus title pushed him over $415,000.

Jesse Lonis won one of the first High Roller events in CoinPoker’s Global Online Poker Championship, beating an 83-player field in the $5,000 buy-in for $153,000. PokerStrategy.com reported the result and said the table included Seth Davies, Bencb, Patrick Leonard, PapoMC and online cash-game regular DavyJones.

As reported earlier in August, CoinPoker had already launched the GOPC as a $50 million series running through Sept. 28. The win landed just a day after the championship began, so Lonis scored right as the new online festival got moving.

CoinPoker’s schedule page says the GOPC is built around more than 700 medal events and that winners receive Gold Medals, with silver and bronze medals going to other top finishers. The site says Gold Medals are physical trophies with matching digital versions in a Trophy Cabinet, while silver and bronze are digital awards.

The same schedule puts $4.25 million in guarantees across three Main Event tiers. Those include the $530 Main Event at $3 million guaranteed, the $55 Global Main at $1 million, and the $11 Global Mini Main at $250,000.

Lonis is no stranger to big buy-ins. PokerStrategy.com described him as one of the most successful young players on the high-roller circuit, saying he has almost $33 million in live tournament cashes, eight high roller titles last year and two WSOP bracelets, including one won in an online event in 2022. The GOPC’s $25,500 Super High Roller Championship is scheduled for Sept. 22 with a $1 million guarantee.

The World Poker Tour’s live updates showed the WPT Cyprus Championship Main Event down to seven players as Level 29 began at 75,000-150,000 with a 150,000 ante. The field had drawn 520 entries, the average stack was about 3,725,000, or 25 big blinds, and everyone left was locked for at least $56,500.

As covered in our earlier report, the event had already reached the final nine before play tightened again. Bernardo Miguel Baptista Das Neves went out in seventh for $56,500, setting the final-six lineup for the WPT Final Table. The final table was scheduled for 12:00 noon local time, with the live stream set for 12:30 pm on a 30-minute delay.

Mihai Trofim led the six finalists with 6,225,000 chips. The rest of the lineup was Weiran Pu on 3,800,000, Chadi Rizk on 5,650,000, Sami Ayyoub on 3,650,000, Farbod Nazari on 5,275,000, and Sergiu Cornea on 1,325,000.

The listed payouts put $368,900 and a $10,400 seat into the season-ending WPT World Championship at Wynn Las Vegas on top of first place. Second paid $238,000, third $175,000, fourth $130,000, fifth $97,000, sixth $73,000, and seventh $56,500.

Earlier coverage from Somuchpoker placed the $3,500 championship in the broader WPT Cyprus series at the Chamada Prestige Hotel and Casino in Cyprus, with the series running Aug. 12-24. It said the championship began on Aug. 19 across three starting flights, carried a $2 million guarantee, and hit the money bubble when Emad Ghadamian became the bubble boy.

GTO Wizard added three-way postflop solving that factors in ICM and bounty formats, giving tournament players a new way to study some of the trickiest postflop spots in poker. The update also covers regular knockouts, PKOs and TKOs, and it lets users break down those spots with more detail than the company’s earlier multiway tools.

The new feature set is meant to handle any 3-way postflop situation, with full control over stack sizes, bet sizes, ranges, rake and opponent tendencies. According to GTO Wizard’s blog, users can also nodelock strategies in multiway spots, practice them in the trainer or range builder, and use the system’s support for the bunching effect when one player folds.

As covered in July, GTO Wizard had already broadened its PLO solver with heads-up tools, nodelocking and postflop ICM. This latest rollout goes further by bringing multiway postflop study into the tournament side of the product, where bounty considerations and ICM both matter.

Pokerfuse said the company framed the upgrade as a major breakthrough for tournament study, noting that solvers were mostly limited to heads-up spots until relatively recently, even though multiway analysis has advanced over the past couple of years. The outlet also said the tool can work with fields of up to 4,000 players.

Access is split by subscription tier. Pokerfuse said custom bet sizes, node locking, player profiles and 3-way ICM Single Size solutions are available only to eligible subscribers, while GTO Wizard’s blog said custom multiway solving requires an Elite subscription.

The company’s own write-up described the release as its biggest update ever. It also said multiway postflop solving had been a long-term effort, and that the new system can solve custom 3-way spots instantly with a redesigned Nodelocking interface and a more intelligent frequency locking algorithm.

That blog post also set the release against the company’s earlier multiway work. Before this update, multiway offerings were described as limited to preflop solutions generated with traditional solvers, while the newer postflop version is customizable for any 3-way spot. The same post said users can try a free flop example, Q♠T♠7♥, with unlimited usage.

Adam Hahn won the RGPS Golden Expedition Dallas $600 Main Event at Palace Poker, beating 1,058 entries for $91,456 and his first RunGood ring. The stop was scheduled for Aug. 13-23 at Palace Poker in Grand Prairie, Texas, and the eight starting flights helped lift the prize pool to $529,000, well past the $200,000 guarantee.

According to PokerNews, Hahn beat Jason Fitzpatrick heads-up. The event page said the tournament ended after four days, and as covered earlier in the week, the final table had already been down to four-handed play, with Jeremy Marrero exiting in fourth and the chip lead swinging among Hahn, Fitzpatrick and Simon Webster.

Hahn said he had been away from serious tournament poker for about 10 years before getting back in the game, after focusing on work, life and his kids. He said a couple of days off earlier this month gave him the chance to take a shot, and he had already finished runner-up in Houston earlier in August.

The late stages turned on a series of key pots. The event page described a "Hahn Hits the River" hand where he made a straight on the 5♦ to regain the lead, another spot where he doubled against Fitzpatrick’s jacks, and a hand where Fitzpatrick coolered him with a full house before Hahn won a pot with Q♣4♦ to start heads-up play with the edge.

The title ended with Fitzpatrick holding A♣7♣ against Hahn’s A♦9♣ and failing to improve. Fitzpatrick took second for $56,532, and Hahn also won the PLO high-hand flip for the last nine players, which added a $2,000 RunGood in Aruba travel package. Hahn said he was excited to use the trip at the Caribbean Poker Series event next month.

Jack Hays won the RunGood Poker Series Golden Expedition Southern Indiana $800 Main Event, topping a 393-player field at Caesars Southern Indiana for $57,054 and a championship ring. He beat Craig Welko heads-up after a final table that kept shifting before Hays finally pulled away.

As reported on Aug. 21, the Main Event was already underway at Caesars Southern Indiana with a $200,000 guarantee and four starting flights on the schedule. The series ran Aug. 18-23 in Elizabeth, Indiana, and Hays said his January win at The Barrel in Franklin, Kentucky was his first title outside his home court.

According to PokerNews, Hays said the win felt unreal. He said he had been playing for 21 years, and that this was his second live tournament title after a January victory in a $500 event at The Barrel in Franklin, Kentucky, where he earned $26,000.

He came into the event with more than $63,000 in live tournament winnings, according to The Hendon Mob. The heads-up matchup looked like a mismatch on paper, and Hays knew it as Welko began to dominate and the duel started to swing against him.

Day 2 began with the final 46 players back in action and five RunGood ambassadors still in the mix. Delilah Lerner was the first to go, finishing 28th when her straight ran into Welko’s kings full. Libby Wilson went out in 21st, Taylor Howard in 25th and Matthew Lawrence in 16th, and Defending champion Jasper May bowed out in 13th when his ace-queen lost to Tim Burden’s ace-jack after Burden paired his jack.

At the nine-handed final table, Mike Scarborough held the chip lead with 2.3 million, while Hays sat second with 1.6 million. Hays grabbed momentum in a key hand against Patty Till when he doubled through with two pair against her kings, then moved past 7.5 million after making a set of deuces against Welko. Scarborough later busted Burden in fifth with a rivered full house, and Hays then knocked out Scarborough in third when Scarborough shoved a straight into Hays’ nut straight.

That left Hays with a 9.7 million to 2 million lead over Welko at the start of heads-up play. Welko fought back with a king-eight flip against Hays’ pocket sevens and then took the lead after calling down Hays with a pair of deuces, but Hays recovered by jamming blind and spiking a jack on the turn for a double-up.

The title ended when Welko moved all in for 5 million with ace-jack, Hays called with king-seven, and the flop paired Hays’ sevens. Welko, who already had three RunGood rings and had finished runner-up in this same event to Nick Rigby a year earlier, was denied a second straight title.

Crown Melbourne has locked in 8 to 24 April 2027 for the next Aussie Millions Poker Championship, giving the festival a 17-day run and leaving the full schedule and event structures to be announced later. The move keeps the series in the April window it used in 2026, after the event shifted away from its traditional January slot.

The new dates come about two weeks earlier than the 2026 series, which started in late April and ran through 10 May. That edition ended with Malcolm Trayner winning the Main Event after outlasting a 770-player field.

The 2026 Main Event carried a headline top prize of $1,667,050, according to Pokermedia and ASGAM. SoMuchPoker described the event as an AUD 10,600 Main Event and reported Trayner’s winner’s prize as AUD 1,382,198, with Dean Blatt taking AUD 1,000,072 for second and Dejan Boskovic earning AUD 921,030 for third.

Crown Melbourne’s next poker stop in Melbourne is the Victorian Poker Championship, which will run from 12 to 27 October. The series has been expanded to 21 events.

The VPC schedule will include a $2,500 Main Event with four Day 1 flights, plus two High Roller tournaments priced at $5,000 and $10,000. It will also feature a Mystery Bounty, H.O.R.S.E, 8-Game and 2-7 Triple Draw.

There will also be two dedicated Pot Limit Omaha events, including a $5,000 event and a special marquee event. Joe Hachem and Van Marcus will return as ambassadors, and the Australian Poker Tour will serve as the official satellite partner for the series.

Boris Zeleny reached the top of the Summer Polish Poker Cup Main Event final table, where only nine players were left in the chase for the €82,678 top prize. The home favorite held a huge lead with 45.5 million chips, while Maksym Ronshyn sat second with just under 22 million.

SPadePoker said it took more than 13 hours of play to lock up the final nine. The final table was shaped from a field of 375 players fighting for a seat in the finale, and each player had already secured €315.

The Main Event drew 4,013 entries on its opening days and built a prize pool above €500,000. That pool was paid out to 375 players, and 18 of them collected a €500 qualification bonus for qualifying twice.

Four players advanced three times and took home €1,500 each. Mihael Vukicevic from Croatia ended up with the largest stack, followed by Austria’s Marko Grujic, while Belarus’s Artsiom Abmiotka was also among the biggest stacks.

Banco Casino Bratislava had billed the third stop of the series as running August 17-24, with a €250,000 Main Event for a €150 buy-in. The casino also said festival prize pools were expected to exceed €400,000 and highlighted multi-qualification bonuses as a new feature.

Phil Hellmuth says he is ready to reshuffle his World Series of Poker calendar and spend more of the next four or five years on poker as he chases bracelet No. 24. The push comes after he fell one spot short of his 18th bracelet this summer.

In an emotional July 15 interview with PokerNews, Hellmuth said the runner-up finish in Event #99, the $5,000 8-Handed No-Limit Hold’em event, still hurt. He earned $464,286 for second place and said there is a big difference between first and second, adding that he would be thinking about the result for months.

Hellmuth also said his sons Phillip III and Nick were there for the heads-up match against Darren Rabinowitz, and that having them on the rail meant the world to him. The family presence mattered to him because his parents had been there for a large share of his earlier bracelet wins, and now his sons were seeing him make another deep run.

Speaking later to PokerOrg soon after the near miss, Hellmuth said the loss had not dented his motivation. He said criticism gives him more fuel, after Shaun Deeb said late last year that he did not think Hellmuth would win another bracelet and that the game had passed him by.

Hellmuth’s answer is to play more events and rewrite his WSOP schedule so he can enter the right tournaments. He said he wants more no-limit hold’em and more pot-limit Omaha, especially formats where he can sit for hours without cards, make final tables, and use his reading ability. He also said people have forgotten how good he is in no-limit hold’em and argued he can still win any no-limit tournament in any structure on any day.

Hellmuth said he played only two PokerGO Studio tournaments last year, but this year he went there early, made a final table in his first event, and reached another in his third. In the Omaha Hi-Lo 8 or Better Championship, he said he could see the mistakes other players were making and believed he should have finished in the top three.

The wider WSOP backdrop has also changed. PokerNews reported in February that the 2026 festival ran from May 26 to July 15, included 100 live bracelet events, and put more emphasis on Pot-Limit Omaha, with events such as a $1,500 Double Board Bomb Pot PLO and a $1,500 Pick Your PLO. In a November 2025 interview, Hellmuth also complained that too many bracelets were being awarded each year and said he would stop playing if the trend kept going.

Bharath Janardhan finished Day 1b of the EPT Barcelona Main Event with 321,000 chips and the top stack from the second and final €5,300 starting flight at Casino Barcelona. The flight drew 1,049 entries and sent 342 players through to Day 2, bringing the tournament to 1,684 entries and 535 survivors at the time of reporting, with the prize pool listed at €8,217,750.

As covered in our Aug. 22 report on Day 1a, Michael Dwyer had already set the pace with 363,500 from the opening flight. PokerOrg later said the total field had climbed to 1,719 as late registration stayed open until the start of Day 2.

Davide Marchi bagged 303,000 for second on the Day 1b leaderboard, Oliver Wulf had 294,500 for third, and Yurii Zabrodotskyi and Giovanni La Padula also finished among the bigger stacks. Dario Sammartino advanced with 201,500, the biggest stack of any PokerStars ambassador, after winning chips in a hand that included a preflop four-bet jam.

Several other recognizable names also made it through, including Raul Mestre and Marle Spragg. Defending champion Thomas Eychenne found a bag after winning the PokerStars Open High Roller, which PokerOrg said was worth €589,395, and former EPT Main Event winners Sebastian Malec and Jan Bendik were still alive going into the next stage.

Not everyone got there. PokerNews said Kevin MacPhee, Manig Loeser, Robin Ylitalo, Sebastian Huber, Biao Ding, Samuel Ju, Benny Glaser and Rania Nasreddine were among the players who missed the cut, while Scott Margereson was eliminated just before dinner.

Day 2 was set to begin at noon local time on Monday, Aug. 24, with the surviving players from both starting flights meeting for the first time at Level 11, 1,000/1,500 with a 1,500 big blind ante. Registration was scheduled to close ten minutes before cards were in the air, and the official prize pool and payouts were due to be announced shortly after play began.

Mike Scarborough took a huge lead in the RunGood Poker Series Golden Expedition Southern Indiana $800 Main Event on Day 1c, finishing with 989,000 chips after busting Shane Collins on the money bubble. Only 19 players survived the flight, and Scarborough ended the night well clear of the rest of the field.

PokerNews’ recap said Scarborough had already built momentum earlier when he flopped a flush to crack Dan LaDuke’s kings. Jonathon Murphy finished second on 624,000, defending champion Jasper May bagged 482,000, and James Lyle ended with 391,000. Charles Edlin, Dale Stafford, John Frenz and RunGood ambassador Matthew Lawrence also advanced.

The run added another strong Caesars Southern Indiana result to Scarborough’s resume. He won the WSOP Circuit Main Event at the same venue in 2023, made the final table of this same event back in May, and his record also includes a 2011 WPT title after he beat Hall of Famer Erik Seidel heads-up.

Ahead of the series, a preview put the $800 buy-in event at a $200,000 guarantee and said it would run across four starting flights. By the time the Day 1c report landed, the field had reached 275 entries through three starting flights, and Day 1d had added 118 more entries with 14 players advancing.

Tom Fuchs won the 2026 PokerStars EPT Barcelona €100,000 no-limit hold'em super high roller after beating Kayhan Mokri heads-up. PokerNews put Fuchs's first-place payout at €1,126,540, while Card Player reported it as $1,306,786, and it was the biggest live score of his career.

The event drew 27 entries and 7 re-entries, with late registration open until the start of Day 2. Organizers had originally planned a three-day marathon, but decided to play it out on the second day instead, so the champion was crowned before the event reached a third session.

The prize pool reached €2,619,540 and was paid only to the top four finishers. Enrico Camosci's elimination created the bubble, leaving the final four locked for at least €314,000.

Mokri finished second for €707,000, Jamie Dwan took third for €472,000, and Byron Kaverman was fourth for €314,000. Mokri’s runner-up finish pushed his career earnings to nearly $24.1 million, while Dwan climbed to 53rd in the Player of the Year standings after adding $547,520 and 240 points.

Fuchs also picked up 360 Player of the Year points and his fifth POY-qualified score of 2026. The result narrowly topped the $1,292,000 he won for taking the 2024 World Series of Poker Paradise $50,000 high roller, which had been his previous best payday, and he has more than $7.2 million in lifetime earnings after first cashing in 2020.

Mokri’s final-table run added another chapter to his Barcelona record. He had been the back-to-back champion in 2023 and 2024, did not cash at the festival in 2025, and returned this year to make heads-up again in the €100,000 event.

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

PokerStars has added WCOOP Games to the build-up to the 25th World Championship of Online Poker, giving players a one-cent route into selected $109 events and a shot at team prizes. The promotion runs alongside the main WCOOP festival and is built around four community teams.

According to PokerStars, players choose which community they want to represent, then try to win their qualifier and earn the ambassador’s Centroll. Successful qualifiers move on to a series of last-longer Face-Offs played inside regular WCOOP tournaments, with Benjamin “Spraggy” Spragg, Marle “MarlzTV” Spragg, Sebastian “peace&loove” Huber, and Del & Phil leading the four teams.

As reported last week, PokerStars had already published the 25th WCOOP schedule, which runs from Sept. 6 to 30 and covers 350 tournaments across 121 numbered events. The series carries at least $40 million in guarantees, most events are split into Low, Medium and High buy-in tiers, and every tournament winner will receive an official WCOOP trophy shipped home.

WCOOP Games qualifiers are scheduled for Aug. 23, Aug. 30 and Sept. 6. The winning communities will receive dedicated freerolls worth up to $7,000, and every member of the overall winning team will collect a $1,000 WCOOP Main Event ticket.

The broader WCOOP package also includes qualification paths starting at $0.55 through traditional satellites, $0.75 Spin & Go qualifiers, the returning WCOOP Lucky Dip promotion with $500,000 in tournament tickets, and Power Path Express, which adds more than $175,000 in ticket bundles and Main Event entries. PokerStars is also running WCOOP leaderboards for Low, Medium, High and overall Player of the Series, with another $100,000 set aside for those races.

Jason Wheeler won the PokerStars Open Barcelona Main Event, taking the €1,650 no-limit hold’em title from a field of 4,333 entries and banking $847,960. The event was built from eight starting flights and produced a prize pool of nearly $7.3 million. It was Wheeler’s biggest score yet, topping the $671,591 he earned for runner-up in Prague in 2017, and it came only a few weeks after his fifth-place finish in the World Series of Poker Main Event for $2,250,000.

According to Card Player, the final day began with just eight players left and Han Feng in the lead, with Wheeler sitting third in chips. As covered in our Aug. 21 preview, Feng had already been the name to catch after taking the chip lead into Day 3. Wheeler worked his way through the last table and eventually beat Alexander Ivarsson heads-up to close out the event.

Feng finished sixth for $172,388 after outlasting Felipe Boianovsky in eighth and Gregoire Jarry in seventh. Mahersh Selvakumaran took fifth for $224,100, Bogdan Petrascu was fourth for $291,299, and Darko Svesko was third for $378,392. Ivarsson finished second for $530,120.

Wheeler also collected 1,320 Card Player Player of the Year points, giving him 2,479 for the season and putting him inside the top 100 in the 2026 standings presented by CoinPoker. It was his first title of the year and his fifth final-table finish.

Michael Dwyer ended Day 1a of the €5,300 EPT Barcelona Main Event with 363,500 chips and the lead at Casino Barcelona. The first starting flight drew 635 entries, and 193 players survived ten one-hour levels to bag for Day 2.

As covered in our Aug. 12 look at the Barcelona festival, the Main Event runs alongside a busy EPT week. PokerNews reported that Dwyer took over the top spot in the final level after rivering two pair to crack Jakob Karlsson’s cowboys and send him out.

Matteo Cecchetti finished second with 345,000, and Mark Teltscher was third with 324,000. The other notable bags included Matthew Frankland and Romain Locquet on 200,500 apiece, Nicholas Seward on 141,000, Arian Kashani on 136,500, Anton Wigg on 131,000, Mihai Niste on 126,500, Barny Boatman on 125,500, Maria Konnikova on 109,000, Nicolas Chouity on 106,500, Tomasz Brzezinski on 105,500, Simon Wiciak on 97,500, Benjamin Spragg on 93,500, and Simon Brandstrom on 60,000. Frankland had also recovered from an early stumble by tripling up before dinner with a rivered flush against Alexander Yen, then later busting Seunghyuk Jung when his queens held. Spragg and Konnikova are PokerStars ambassadors.

The prize pool climbed to €3,079,750 after Day 1a, and it still has room to grow because Day 1b is still to come and late registration remains open until the start of Day 2. Day 1b gets underway at noon local time later today.