Finland's Kai Lehto Conquers Huge PokerStars Open Cup in Prague (€162,000)
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The 2025 PokerStars European Poker Tour (EPT) Prague festival is in full swing, with more than a dozen tournaments already crowning their champions. Finland's Kai Lehto is among those winners, having triumphed in the monster-sized €825 PokerStars Open Cup for €162,000, which happens to be the second-largest live score of his career.
Including re-entries, the €825 PokerStars Open Cup attracted a bumper field of 2,140, creating an impressive €1,540,800 prize pool. The top 321 finishers shared that princely sum, with such luminaries as Vincent Meli, Simon Higgins, and Pavels Spirins seeing a return on their investments.
By the time only nine players remained in contention for the title, €21,200 was the least any of those finalists could collect from the cashier's desk.
€825 PokerStars Open Cup Final Table Results
| Rank | Player | Country | Prize |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kai Lehto | Finland | €162,000* |
| 2 | Paul Grummitt | United Kingdom | €145,000* |
| 3 | Salvatore Falco | Switzerland | €136,000* |
| 4 | Jean-Baptiste Pano | France | €112,500* |
| 5 | Onni Huttunen | Finland | €60,620 |
| 6 | Georgios Skaparis | Cyprus | €46,620 |
| 7 | Georgios Tsouloftas | Cyprus | €35,870 |
| 8 | Gerald Karlic | Austria | €27,600 |
| 9 | Daniel Wilson | Ireland | €21,200 |
*reflects a four-handed deal
Ireland's Dan Wilson, champion of the 2016 Irish Open, fell by the wayside in ninth and banked the aforementioned €21,200. Austria's Gerald Karlic was the next to fall, his eighth-place finish earning him a €27,600 prize, bringing his lifetime earnings ever closer to $4.1 million.
The 2024 EPT Cyprus runner-up, Georgios Tsouloftas, ran out of steam in seventh, a finish good for €35,870, while fellow Cypriot Georgios Skaparis saw his deep run in a sixth-place finish worth €46,620.
The final five became four after the demise of Onni Huttunen; the Finn scooped a career-best €60,620. Huttunen's previous largest live poker tournament haul weighed in at €11,717 back in September 2023.
With only four players remaining, the tournament director paused the clock to allow a deal to be discussed. Those discussions bore fruit, and the tournament resumed with players securing six-figure payouts for their efforts.
France's Jean-Baptiste Pano was the main beneficiary of the deal because he crashed by the wayside in fourth. He walked away with €112,500 but would have won €79,000 had there been no deal. That prize is worth more than 10 times the Frenchman's previous biggest score.
There was also a career-defining prize for third-place finisher Salvatore Falco. The Swiss grinder banked €136,000 as part of the deal, eclipsing his previous largest prize of just $1,347!
Heads-up pitted Lehto against the United Kingdom's Paul Grummitt in a battle for the title. Like the now-busted deal-makers, Grummitt secured by far the largest prize of his career when he busted. The Brit took home €145,000; his previous largest prize was for $10,500 earlier this year.
Lehto had outlasted a huge field of 2,140 entrants and claimed the €162,000 top prize for himself. Had there been no deal and Lehto won, he would have banked a career-best score. As it happens, the €162,000 he won is second only to the €204,500 he was awarded when he finished second to Christopher Soyza in a €10,300 High Roller at the 2018 EPT Barcelona festival.
Other 2025 EPT Prague Side Events Results
Lehto's haul is the largest of the 2025 PokerStars EPT Prague festival so far, although the €154,400 that Joachim Haraldstad banked after winning the €10,200 Pot-Limit Omaha 6-Max ran it close.
Bulgaria's Yulian Bogdanov (€147,000) and Italian Alain Stia (€123,860) also helped themselves to six-figure prizes, doing so in the €10,200 No-Limit Hold'em Mystery Bounty and the €5,200 Pot-Limit Omaha events, respectively.
Bogdanov finds himself third in chips with only 12 players remaining in the €1,650 PokerStars Open Main Event. Play resumes at noon local time under the watchful eyes of the PokerNews live reporting team. The Bulgarian is already guaranteed €34,520 for his efforts, but could find himself returning home with the €583,000 top prize in tow.
| Event | Entrants | Prize Pool | Champion | Prize |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| €10,200 PLO 6-Max | 49 | €475,300 | Joachim Haraldstad | €154,400 |
| €10,200 NLHE Mystery Bounty | 32 | €310,080 | Yulian Bogdanov | €147,000 |
| €5,200 PLO | 115 | €557,750 | Alain Stia | Italy |
| €20,000 NLHE | 8 | €152,000 | Enrico Camosci | €85,690 |
| €1,100 NLHE Freezeout | 294 | €282,240 | Michal Schuh | €57,700 |
| €2,100 NLHE Hyper Turbo KO Freezeout | 132 | €232,440 | Selvakumaran Mahersh | €31,140 |
| €1,050 NLHE Hyper Turbo Freezeout | 126 | €120,960 | Marcos Antolin | €31,040 |
| €3,250 NLHE Senior's High Roller | 19 | €55,290 | Andrew Dickinson | €24,220* |
| €550 NLHE Hyper Turbo Freezeout | 165 | €79,200 | Jonathan Stoeber | €18,510 |
| €1,100 8-Game | 55 | €52,800 | Sergii Baranov | €17,160 |
| €550 NLHE Seniors | 260 | €124,800 | Andrea Schettino | €16,245 |
| €330 NLHE Women's Event | 116 | €33,408 | Marina Mendy | €8,568 |
*payout after a deal
Follow the PokerStars EPT Prague Main Event Action at PokerNews
PokerNews' industry-leading live reporting team is on the ground in Prague, bringing you live updates of the most exciting events. At noon today, December 8, the €5,300 EPT Prague Main Event begins. Last year, this tournament drew in 1,458 entrants, and Pedro Marques outlasted them all. Marques banked €963,450 after a heads-up deal with Paul Runcan of Romania.
We also have coverage of the final day's action from the €1,650 PokerStars Open Main Event from noon. Only 12 players remain in contention for the €583,000 top prize.
At 12:30 p.m. local time, some of the world's best players will descend on the tournment area and battle it out in the two-day €50,000 EPT Super High Roller. Frenchman Thomas Santerne is the reigning champion, having defeated Niklas "Lena900" Astedt heads-up 12 months ago. Santerne's victory came with €385,725 after a heads-up deal.
