Super Main Event Hits $72m Prize Pool as 24 Players Survive to Penultimate Day

Atlantis Resort on Paradise Island has been the poker venue to be at this week, as the $25,000 buy-in Super Main Event attracted so many entries that the guarantee of $60m was smashed, creating the eighth-biggest prizepool of all-time at $72m. In fact, it was the biggest ever prizepool outside of the WSOP Main Event in Las Vegas, and with 24 players left, it’s anyone’s game.

LeFrancois Leading from the Front

With two dozen players still in the fight to win the 2025 WSOP Super Main Event top prize of $10m, the chip leader is the former WSOP Main Event 11^th-placed player, Pascal LeFrancois. The Canadian is one of two players from his country at the top of the counts, with his 126.4 million lead followed by William Blais with 123.3 million.

LeFrancois is a fascinating character in the game of poker. He won his first WSOP bracelet the year he came 117^th in the Main Event for $635,011. Crowned in the $1,500 buy-in No-Limit Hold’em Championship Event #8 when he was just a 23-year-old college student from Montreal, Quebec, LeFrancois fell short of Duhamel in the World Championship, but won $568,974 to win his first bracelet.

Here’s how a young LeFrancois and Duhamel celebrated reaching the latter stages of the 2010 WSOP Main Event, which Duhamel went on to win.

Now 15 years on from that result, the 38-year-old LeFrancois is a very different person. More mature, less rebellious away from the felt, more at peace on it, he is still the man who toppled 2,340 other entries in that 2010 NLHE event but better. An elite version of that player, with the added armor of experience. With two days to go, LeFrancois could yet put his name further into the history books of poker in a way his fellow Quebec player hasn’t.

Other Prominent Survivors

There will be 23 determined players sitting between LeFrancois and glory in 48 hours’ time. Chief amongst them might be Blais, but Dutch player Daniel Reijmer (115.4m) and French high rolling businessman Jean-Noel Thorel (101.2m), also have nine-figure stacks.

The wife of Jason Mercier and seasoned live player Natasha Mercier (88m), German player Leonard Maue (70m), poker coach and live game legend Faraz Jaka (63.3m), eight-time WSOP bracelet winner Benny Glaser (62.6m), high-stakes pros Eric Wasserson (57.5m) and the GGPoker ambassador Felipe Ramos (16m) will all have designs on the ultimate victory that will likely define their poker careers.

Martin Kabrhel went into the action as top dog among the 202 players who would play down to 24 on the day. But the Czech player, who had been referring to Eric Wasserson as ‘Wassy Boy’ throughout, eventual fell foul of the American to depart. Jesse Lonis also busted, this time in 55^th place but in surviving to the top 61 players, the Stateside player did at least retain his top spot in the GPI Player of the Year race.

A Double Winner

Gustavo Silva Campos busted in 53^rd place but while he may have been distraught at leaving the Super Main Event in normal circumstances, his situation was anything but. Playing the $10,300-entry GGMillion$ on GGPoker, he had reached the final table by the start of Day 3 in the Super Main Event. That meant he was being streamed in both events at the same time and incredibly, he won the GGMillion$ for over $223,000 to claim a piece of poker history along with six figures of profit.

While Campos had the most unique win of the evening, the Dutch player Daniel Reijmer may have had the most important. In the final hand of the night, his pocket queens held up against the ace-jack suited of Lautaro Guerra and the ace-five belonging to Tomas Kubalik. Reijmer’s ladies booted both of his opponents to the rail and reduced the field to 24 hopefuls all chasing the top prize of $10 million.

Only time will tell if that final hand spurs Reijmer on to victory but with just 24 players still in the $25,000 Super Main Event, the conclusion to the event at Atlantis Resort on Paradise Island in The Bahamas will be one to watch.