PA Poker News September Update: Pennsylvania's Nick Rigby Claims Title; RGPS Coming to Keystone State
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Hi! I'm Keith Becker, PokerNews Ambassador and Pennsylvania native, here with a PA poker update for June 2025. It's an exciting time in America for the game we all know and love, and I'm excited to be bringing you state highlights every month.
What are the big issues and stories on everyone's minds? Let’s get into it.
Live Poker in PA
First, a headline from the live poker streets. You might remember Pennsylvania's Nick Rigby from his recent WSOP main event appearances, where he showed a penchant for running big bluffs with "the dirty diaper," deuce-three offsuit. Well, Rigby is back making live headlines as he just notched his third biggest score, taking down the RunGood Grand Prix Southern Indiana Main Event.
Rigby won the $800 Main Event for a cash of over $52,000, and said he plans to head to WPT Bay 101 next, where he has the distinction of being one of the targeted Shooting Star Bounties.
And speaking of Rungood Grand Prix, people out in MY neck of the woods here in Central PA are getting a Rungood Stop!
The RunGood Grand Prix touches down at Hollywood Casino at Penn National Race Course (Grantville, PA) from September 16–21. The six-day festival features nine RGPS Ring Events with buy-ins ranging from $200-$400 and capped off with a, $800 buy-in Main Event live reported by PokerNews. This is RGPS’s first stop at Penn National.
The series features only a $50K Guaranteed, but personally, I think it's better that they have a modest guarantee than none at all. I have been REALLY looking forward to this series as a pretty recreational live poker player myself, and I truly hope that it reinvigorates the room and brings some much-needed poker enthusiasm to the area. I'm a big fan of what RunGood has done in the live poker space. I'll be out there for a lot of this series, so please come find me and say hi if you are as well!
Remember, every ring winner from this year can buy into the PokerGO Tour Dream Seat Invitational - a huge opportunity from RunGood to win a seat into the PGT Championship freeroll, to compete with some of the best in the world in a high-stakes, televised showdown at the PokerGo Studio in 2026.
Online Poker in PA
Heading to the online operators, BetRivers recently completed their very first series, the Multi-State Summer Series. The series was a smashing success, and particularly exciting for Delaware players, who, prior to BetRivers launching there in June, were unable to play online poker for 18 months. The series featured these Gold and Silver tier leaderboards, which created a lot of buzz ... and on a personal note, leaving for vacation with my family and watching myself slip to 11th and 12th on the leaderboards was devastating. You better believe I'll be firing away at the next ones!
BetRivers is also running some promos for other player types at the moment, with cash game leaderboards going all the time, and an SNG SURGE promo aimed at low stakes sit-and-go players. Play 9 $1 SNGs and you will get $16 worth of tickets in your account!
Meanwhile, on BetMGM Poker, players can, as usual, find satellites aimed at a live series out at the Borgata. This time it's the Borgata BIG BIG BUY-IN event running September 8-16, with buy-ins ranging from $580 all the way up to a $10,000. Players can find satellites in the BetMGM poker client or even register for the events directly.
And over on WSOP, they are concluding their 2025 Summer Series, which ends in a $150K Guaranteed Mystery Bounty Main Event! WSOP is also continuing to run their $1 Million Blast promotion, where if you play $100 Blast Spins, you have a chance at a juiced $1 Million prize pool, and they have a "Card Strike" promo for cash game players. Cash game players who opt in receive a Card Strike board and match their hole cards to that board. Once all the cards are marked off within the hand limit, you spin a wheel to determine your prize up to $25,000.
And finally, PokerStars USA continues to award silver passes for the NAPT, as well as running satellites currently for their PokerStars Open Maryland in October. The festival runs from October 19th to 26th, featuring an $1,100 buy-in Main Event with a $300K Guaranteed, a Women's Event, a $2,200 High Roller ... and a Mystery Bounty event with a "Sports Betting Twist."
The twist is that at the close of registration, players have to pick the winning team in a football game. Players who choose the winning side correctly can "Go for 2" in the mystery bounty period, choosing to put back their Mystery Bounty Prize and draw again. So how good are you at picking winners?
Poker is surging in America, and I'm thrilled to be your ambassador here in Pennsylvania. For more information, check out our PokerNews Pennsylvania page here, and be sure to follow me on socials to stay in the know. I’ll be back next month with another update!
Keith Becker is an American poker player based out of Pennsylvania. A former member of PokerStars Team Pro Online, Becker is now a PokerNews Ambassador and Streamer. Becker has been streaming poker on Twitch since Day 1 of regulated poker in Pennsylvania and has led a grassroots movement for PA to join the Multi-State Internet Gaming Agreement.
*Lead image courtesy of Commonwealth Media Services.
