The WSOP Europe is coming to a close in Prague. This year, all events count toward the Player of the Year race, which has brought many grinders from the US to Europe.
One of the favorites, Shaun Deeb, lost twice in heads-up matches for the bracelet.
In a mixed PLO tournament, in a key hand, an opponent showed Shaun four of a kind:
– Lost HU one of the sickest hands. 3-bet , he calls.
Flop . I bet small he raises small, and I call.
Turn is a , I check call like 1/3rd of my remaining stack.
River is a . I called his all-in.
I see dry ace in his hand. I start to celebrate, then realize he was way more happy, and notice his other cards are .
The €565 Colossus tournament attracted over 2,600 entries. Shaun entered heads-up as the chip leader with a stack of 80bb to 50bb, but lost again to the French amateur.
In one of the decisive hands, Shaun was shown quads again.
The French player shoved on the river, and Shaun spent several time banks, but called.
A year ago, Shaun was offered a $10k bet that he would never surpass Phil Hellmuth in bracelets:
“I’m running good on this bet so far,” Shaun’s opponent wrote after he lost two heads-up games.
– You want to up it?
– Potentially. Let me talk to my quant and get back to you by Monday.
Shaun currently has 8 bracelets and Phil has 17.
Ole Schemion won the €5,300 PLO European Championship.
With 30 players remaining, Norway's Birger Larsen was disqualified. His stack was cleared from the table, and he was awarded the 30th-place prize of €13,000.
According to neighbors, Birger was drinking heavily and behaving aggressively during the tournament. Managers reprimanded him, which further angered the Norwegian. He was finally infuriated by a penalty and an attempt by one of the players to calm him down. The neighbor began making calming hand gestures, and Larsen responded by waving him away as if he were a pesky fly.
"One of the stupidest ways to get disqualified at the WSOP," commentators on social media concluded.
But many found this punishment too cruel:
"They could have given him an hour's penalty to cool down. Meanwhile, the blinds would have been eating up his stack."
"I've seen behavior much worse 10 times, and nothing happened. I'm sure if it had been someone famous, there definitely wouldn't have been any disqualification."
In the main tournament, Ramon Colillas and Roman Stoica played a "brilliant" hand .
The discussion continued for several days on Roman's Telegram channel.
On the board , Colillas bet, and Stoika reraised. The Spaniard made another raise and called the all-in with . Stoika had .
My "exit" and the "genius" of Ramon Colillas, or I've never seen such a hand before—that's how I'll title this post! 🤯
This spot:
We're playing 5/10k main event day 3
Colillas — (BB)
My hand — (BTN)Board:
Flop (55k) x/b18k/c.
Turn (91k) x/x.
River (91k) b15k/r50k/r120k/r240k(allin)/cTranslation for everyone:
I opened from the button, he calls in the big blind.
I bet small on the flop, he calls, turn — check-check.
And on the river, it all started: he block-bet 16% of the pot, I raised to 3.3x, got another raise to 2.4x, and then I shoved him (he had the same amount of chips behind him as his last raise). He burned through all the time pots and called with second pair.Why did I play like that?
I had a clear indication that he was overplaying his hands, and I calmly expected that he could, indeed, bet-3-bet with some ✖✖, with a Qx hand, with double-pairs, respectively.And yes, I rebuy narrowly and so on. Just in case you were wondering, I understand and understood that. In this line, I sincerely believed and was confident that I would beat everything except a straight 😟.
This hand turned out like it was from a $1 rebuy/add-on tournament. I probably play hands like this once a year, and specifically live, maybe I don't even play them at all.
His hand shocked me, of course, a great bet-3-bet and all-in call. What can I say—he's a genius 👏
Whoever played worse/better/more logically, share your thoughts on this crazy hand in the comments 👇
P.S. We were trying to figure out this spot in the software, and even the wizard crashed from this hand 😂
The Main Event saw 2,617 entries. Marius Kudzmanas emerged as the champion, named by a GG Network ambassador Damir Zhugralin as Aleksejs Ponakovs's most promising student. This is the Lithuanian's third bracelet. He won his first two online.
High-stakes regular Chris Nguyen won the $20,000 Super High Roller. He defeated Ren Lin heads-up.
On one of the streams, Rampage got it all in with queens against kings for a $165k pot.
“I’d want to go once,” he warned his opponent, after which he saw a queen on the flop.
“I want to go once.” 😳@rampagepoker puts it in way behind for $165,000💰 pic.twitter.com/hzdBLXtajy
— Hustler Casino Live (@HCLPokerShow) April 9, 2026
Garrett Adelstein announces autobiography :
You may have seen the video…but that’s only a fraction of my story.
3.5 years ago, I basically disappeared from poker. Some thought sent me into hiding. A fair assumption, but not quite. 😎
I’ve spent 10,000 hours grinding away at the most meaningful project of my life: my memoir, Beneath the Cards. It’s an unfiltered account of my insane high-stakes career: underground games, $3,000,000 mid-session swings, drunken binges, death threats, and going broke. Along the way, I share clear, accessible poker insights and dive into the mindset required to survive in my cutthroat arena.
But the book goes beyond poker. I open up about perfectionism, depression, body dysmorphia, my disastrous appearance on Survivor, and what happens when winning stops being enough. At its core, my story is about identity, connection, and rebuilding after major setbacks.
And yes, (and the crew that I believe cheated) is fully addressed. Every mistake I made. Every moment behind the scenes. It’s all in the book. If you think you know my story…you don’t. But you will.
"Congratulations on the book 🥳," Robbie Liu was one of the first to pre-order.
I think you're really going to like the last section. You're in that part a lot.
– I always enjoy a good fiction 😚
Patrick Leonard criticizes Mystery Bounty at every opportunity :
Was just playing mystery bounty (nut worst poker format) and I thought the following could improve them:
1) 50% of the mystery goes to the head like a PKO.
2) When you pull a “bad” bounty, you have the chance to spin the wheel (with a small rake) to multiply it to a “gold” bounty.
3) There’s one gold bounty that lasts from the first hand (late regging mysteries is overpowered atm).
4) We delete them and pretend they never existed.
Thoughts?
"I like mysteries," Shaun Dib disagreed. "You’re crazy to not enjoy them."
"Yeah I mean any format where you’re basically committed in every pot to call off 72o is fun I understand. When that’s a big part of all the schedules it becomes a little tedious!"
“Love option 2. Let’s get VIPs to pay more rake,” Sam Greenwood approved.
"Alternate option: Recs love it," Stacy Vaughan wrote. "Do more things that attract recs."
"Yeah, recs love them, but get beaten by regs even harder in them. It’s great for us! Bigger pools, we beat the recs even more this way. Just nobody really finds it fun."
"Dumb solution: MB claimable from start," Tombos21 suggested. "You get a ticket for each knockout even on hand #1, and draw your bounties at the end of tournament (or after late reg. closes). This way, there's no stupidly high bounty power forcing you all-in with A2C, it still feels sufficiently gambly to recreational players, and it incentivizes playing from start like any other bounty format."
Niall Farrell has come up with a new way to win at poker:
Setting all my poker client languages to Chinese to run better, as I am a logical and rational adult.
Jared Jaffe gave his strong opinion on Andrew Robl's pass:
My 2 cents on the Robl hand.
Everyone who posted their thoughts using more than 20 words should be stoned in front of the Bellagio fountains. And I’m being generous with 20.
“Great fold,” wrote one of the commentators, “but not as great as Schulmann was going on about.”
Exactly one month has passed since the closure of Doug Polk's Lodge club. No charges have been brought against the owners, but there are no plans to return their money.
The state seized approximately $2 million. It was expected that the money would be returned to the owners if no charges were filed. But neither happened.
Journalists reviewed a new batch of court documents. The state has dropped money laundering charges, instead focusing on organizing illegal gambling.
Currently, the state and investigative authorities are seizing The Lodge's financial assets, claiming there are probable causes to believe illegal gambling was taking place at the club. Criminal charges against the owners are not required in this case, and it's unclear whether they will ever be brought.
Jeremy Ausmus admitted that he has never done backing:
I’ve never been big on backing other players—I’ve really only done it once. I’d much rather go long on the S&P 500 than sweat someone else’s variance while I’m already navigating my own. There is a massive amount of mental ease that comes with an investment you don't have to manage or think about daily.
"It’s the best and the worst thing in the world," Patrick Leonard shared. "Nothing is worse, nothing is better. Nothing makes you lose more sleep, nothing makes you happier."
“This is how you can describe having kids,” Tim Duckworth noted.
Andrew Neeme found a distant relative:
This is my evil twin euro crusher brother and he must be stopped at all costs.
Heads-up cash game regular FUUUAAARK isn't thrilled with CoinPoker's new rake system :
To show you concretely, I had a recreational player in NL10K, he sat me with 100bb / 10k, I took him everything in 230 hands, and I was up only $436 / 4.3bb, meaning almost all our money went into the rake.
That's approximately 40bb/100 rake for this game, it's completely unbeatable and we have yet no real information about the real exact rakeback offer.
"I'm confused because that pot is clearly 265bb so 26.5k" Jake Hershey asked. "How are you in for $10k and hes in $10k, it ends with a $26k pot, and you only make $436? The math is not mathing."
"I already wrote that all the money went to rake. At first, he won over 300bb, then I won it all back, but my profit was only 4bb."
Mario Mosböck spoke on behalf of CoinPoker:
This post is simply false and a weak attempt to push a misleading narrative from ACR associates.
Bottom line: if you’re a high-stakes player (or any stakes for that matter), recreational or pro, you’ll be best taken care of CoinPoker.
FUUUAAARK even spoke to the Coin team and had the VIP rewards model explained to him, but conveniently leaves that part out.
Phil Nagy, pretty weak jab from you and your team. I honestly thought you’d be above that, but there we go.
The match being referenced is vs another pro. In that case, both players receive ~90% back. That's ~1,5bb/100 net rake (not 20bb) – might be worth mentioning next time.
If it’s vs a recreational, the VIP gets a larger share to reduce the loss rate and keep games running longer.
This is reviewed weekly to ensure VIPs are properly supported. Together with the high-stakes community.Every high-stakes player also understands this. It’s the standard model across private and club games, where most of those games are running nowadays. There’s a reason public HS games rarely sustain themselves: VIPs get crushed too quickly.
How long would you stick around as a recreational stick with a -25bb</100 win rate? That’s basically never winning. They quit, and the games die.
No one would play Blackjack with 10% house edge. With 0,5% its one of the most popular games in the world.
VIPs are people & the most important part of the poker ecosystem – they wanna have a good experience.As a game operator, you have to manage loss rates to keep the ecosystem alive. Focusing on the losing player is the single most important thing, while being fair to the winning players.
But its a zero sum game, if VIP lose little slower -> PROs win a little slower. However, they will stick around longer and games will stay alive.
I have been a pro my whole life, but also have to agree that keeping the VIPs happy is the most important part.
CoinPoker_OFF is really trying to build the best poker experience in the world & they have some of the sharpest minds working on this. If we want HS public games imo they are our only shot at this moment.
GG shut them down entirely 2 years ago (for reasons above, making them private) & ACR is too focused on stopping Coin instead of working on their own product.
"Imagine seeing a tweet like this and the first thing you do is blame Phil Nagy," wrote WSOP Europe Main Event finalist Chris Hunichen. "Grow up man that’s absurd. You should at least apologize.."
"Mario with the « more rake is better »from the top rope,'" high-stakes regular Pascal Lefrancois was also unimpressed.
FUUUAAARK responded quickly:
Hi Mario, first I'd like to correct one thing. I'm an independent guy, I'm not working for ACR, I posted my Tweets on my own initiative.
Then yes, I spoke to the Coin Team, but my experience as a player remains the same. And not to mention, they blocked me and told me if I don't like the room, then don't play it.
And to finish, the example I showed was against a recreational player, not a reg battle.
But anyways, the goal of my post was simply to show the current state on Coin, and that for now games in High-Stakes are unbeatable or barely, that's all.
So I don’t really see how my post can be considered “ false”.
The winner of the last GGMillions with a buy-in of $10k qualified for the tournament through a series of satellites, starting his journey with a buy-in of $10.
72oooo 🇦🇹 just pulled off an epic satellite run to win the GGMillion$ High Rollers on April 7, 2026! 🏆
🥇 Finished 1st out of 210 players
🚀 Satellited via $10 → $108 → $1,050 → $10,000
💰 Prize $411,843.20
🎟️ Plus a $10K GGM$ Live Paradise packageFrom a $10 step to a GGMillion$ title, unreal.
