Niklas Astedt Wins Super High Roller in Paris, EPT Main Event Reaches Late Stages

With cashes for Punnat Punsri and Artur Martirosian, it was the Swedish online poker giant Niklas Astedt who won the latest massive high roller in Paris. The French EPT Stop has seen consistent crowds all week while the $6,000-entry Main Event has been progressing and we’ve got an update from that too in our latest bulleting from the city famed for its romantic allure.

Astedt Astute in French Victory

The $59,000-entry Super High Roller was nicknamed as a ‘Second Chance’ thanks to its placement in the 2026 EPT schedule. Coming almost a fortnight after the action kicked off, this time there were 35 entrants, and just five of them would be paid. When the field was whittled to the final nine players, the last table of the tournament was formed, but four more players needed to bust to reach the money places.

Exits for Bulgarian Fahredin Mustafov, American Brandon Wilson and the Austrian player Klemens Roiter followed, and play moved to the bubble. In the end, it was the Spanish player Adrian Mateos who missed out on profit in sixth place. Into the money, Russian player Artur Martirosian won $184,800 as he fell in fifth place. His exit was followed by that of the Italian player Enrico Camosci, who banked $228,000.

Into the podium places, the Thai high roller Punnat Punsri crashed out in third place for $316,000, leaving the Belarussian professional Mikalai Vaskaboinikau to take on Niklas Astedt for the title. The final heads-up battle went down to the wire but in the end, it was the Swedish player who prevailed, scooping up $739,000 in prize money, with Vaskaboinikau winning $476,500 as runner-up in Paris.

Main Event Enters Final Stages

With just a couple of tables left in the €5,300-entry EPT Paris Main Event, there are some very big names battling it out for what will eventually be a top prize of over a million dollars. In fact, if no dealing is done, then the top prize will be an eye-watering $1.35 million, one of the biggest prizes in EPT Main Event history.

Heading into Day 4, Jorge Abreu was the chip leader but while the Portuguese player’s stack started on 2.5 million, and while it stayed there for the opening half of the day as others went past him in the chipcounts, such as Jessica Teusl, the Austrian high roller who has added Super High Roller results to an improve backlog of MTT success in recent months, Abreu remains a danger on 2.89m chips.

The Czech player Zdenek Zizka, a famous backgammon player in his own right too, is looking for more success in poker, and would add the second of three very special titles to his resume if he can win in Paris, having already won a WSOP bracelet this summer. Only needing a WPT title to complete the ‘Triple Crown’ would be an amazing achievement for a player whose first discipline was not the game of poker. He has a million chips and a dream.

Is Nazar Buhaiov Bullying His Way to Victory?

The Ukrainian player Nazar Buhaiov is the chip leader at the time of going to press, with an impressive 8.09 million chips, over double his nearest challenger, the Dutch player Joris Riujs (3.79m). Local heroes Thierry Gogniat (2.7m) and Julien Mariani (2.75m) round out the top five just above Felix Schneiders (2.64m) as just 19 players remain in the hunt for EPT glory in Paris this weekend.

It has been a very busy week in Paris already on the EPT. Earlier this week, the chess Grandmaster Ottomar Ladva bagged a big one for Estonia as he checked out a win in the first Super High Roller of the week. That followed two early wins in the festival for EPT stalwarts Daniel Dvoress and Boris Angelov. The Bulgarian Angelov won the Mystery Bounty event for a massive total prize fund of $256,000 including $141,500 in bounties alone.

In the first High Roller event of the series, costing $29,500 to play, the Canadian player Daniel Dvoress added to his already glowing reputation by crushing the souls of some poker greats to win $337,450 up top. Artur Martirosian busted outside the money places again in that event, while the Bulgarian player Dimitar Danchev cashed for $217,550 as runner-up.

Photography by Jules Pochy and Eloy Cabascas for PokerStars, the home of the European Poker Tour.