button in SafariKoen De Visscher Seals Career-Best Score and 2026 PSO Namur Main Event Win (€220,800)
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The curtain has come down on the 2026 PokerStars Open Namur Main Event at Circus Casino Resort, and the nine players returning for the final table served up an epic battle of willpower and high-level poker strategies, with over 11 hours of play required before Koen De Visscher was crowned champion on native soil, defeating Austria’s Henrik Veldhoen heads‑up.
In truth, the real battle did not lie there, as De Visscher held a 10:1 advantage after eliminating British crusher Andrew Hulme in third, but in the four-handed confrontation that raged between the Belgian, Hulme, Veldhoen and David Docherty.
After Docherty came unstuck bluffing against Hulme, and was eliminated by the same foe shortly after, De Visscher, Hulme, and Veldhoen would contest pot after pot, it taking over four hours for them to be separated.
De Visscher held the lead for the vast majority, but the right circumstances for two players to be willing to put significant chips in the middle at the same time just didn't seem to appear.
However, he ultimately got the job done, emerging as the last player standing in a 1,572-entry field, bagging the famous shard trophy and huge first-place prize of €220,800 in the process.
2026 PokerStars Open Namur Main Event Final Table Results
| Place | Player | Country | Prize |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Koen De Visscher | Belgium | €220,800 |
| 2 | Henrik Veldhoen | Austria | €138,500 |
| 3 | Andrew Hulme | United Kingdom | €100,300 |
| 4 | David Docherty | United Kingdom | €78,000 |
| 5 | Dario Quattrucci | Italy | €60,000 |
| 6 | Stan van Dijk | Netherlands | €46,000 |
| 7 | Nicolas Burtin | France | €36,000 |
| 8 | Sebastien Guinand | France | €28,000 |
| 9 | Lulei Hu | Italy | €21,558 |
The win reaffirms De Visscher hasn't lost his touch, with the former full-time pro having stepped away from the game in 2012 for at least ten years to focus on family and other interests. De Visscher became slightly jaded with the schedule, but has gradually returned to his first love since 2022.
Winner's Reaction
De Visscher secured a number of six-figure scores when he was playing full-time, but confirmed this was his biggest, and the fact that it came with victory made it much sweeter. "So happy, such a tough day, I played 2008-2012 pretty hectic, then stopped for ten years. I started coming back slowly from 2022 to 2023, mostly in France. This is actually the first time I've played in Belgium for ten years.
It was really tough. For me, I was very tired, actually, I woke up at 3 a.m. and couldn't get back to sleep. The good thing for me was that we were so deep, and I realized immediately this is going to take well into the night, so prepare for that. I knew it was going to be really tough, different profiles, player types, and then some really good players at the end. Especially Andrew, he was the main guy that I knew would be giving me the hardest time, probably David as well. Stan, I think, would have been dangerous, but I coolered him ace-king against ace-queen quite early. I'd heard he was really good, and it seemed the case, so I was glad he was gone."
On Hulme, the champion said, "Me and Andrew really battled hard, not necessarily really big pots, but always stabbing, bluffing, raising. We both knew the ICM issues when Henrik got short. We played so many hands but we also didn't want to get it in light so sometimes, you have to play pretty strange in these spots. I think I handled it pretty well, but I ran really hot, I'm not going to lie. You have to, to win a tournament field size like this, any tournament really.
That's what happened today as well, I hit so many flops, so many hands. I never had a proper tough situation really, where they raise me with something mediocre, it just went my way. I picked my spots wisely, and it turned out well.
It was obvious no one was going to make a big mistake. Henrik got unlucky at points, and things just went my way. Winning the flip with Andrew was the key, clearly. I think if I lose that, we might be playing to 5 a.m.! I think it's a pretty standard call, but I really had to think because it was the first time he rejammed on me. But he was getting a bit shorter, and it was just too good to fold, and an ace in the window."
"My pro career was just a very intense period of five years. It was really fun, and I had nice results, but I always sort of felt it was a tough life to do this full-time your whole life. So I traveled, did other things, I had two kids.
I have a different mindset now, I'm older, I don't know, maybe because it is not the same financial pressure as before. And it's just so liberating that I can play the game when I want, and if I don't want to play for two months, I don't. I might study a bit, I always studied a bit, but not grinding anymore. But I know I can hold my own in fields like this. I just want to say the structure is unreal for a 1k, it's an EPT Main basically, you have so much time. I was down to ten bigs at one point and was thinking, no need to panic.
I'm building a house, so this will probably help with the furniture for that and some holidays with the kids. I probably would have gone to Vegas 15 years ago, but not now!"
Final Day Recap
Veldhoen led the final nine of the €1,491,828 prize pool event, with a narrow gap to Stan van Dijk and Nicolas Burtin, and it was a relatively quiet start to proceedings.
Matters started to get moving when short-stack Lulei Hu busted to the champion with an inferior ace, but that was the only elimination in the first session. On the first hand back after the break, Sebastien Guinand was a goner when he lost a flip to Dario Quattrucci.
Veldhoen was on the right end of a flip to bust Bartin to maintain his lead, but De Visscher hit the front when Quattrucci cold-four-bet-folded when the Belgian had kings, and he then picked up rockets shortly after.
Docherty doubled through van Dijk with cowboys after an ill-timed four-bet jam from the Dutchman. Shortly after, a brutal three-way cooler erupted, resulting in three stacks hitting the middle preflop, and the demise of van Dijk.
De Visscher, van Dijk and Quattrucci all had strong aces, but De Visscher had the best of it, and Quattrucci was last. However Quattrucci found trips on the flop to triple, and De Visscher won a chunky side-pot against van Dijk.
Hulme had been very quiet thus far, being pretty much completely card dead, but that started to change in the next stint as he climbed the standings, helped by picking up quads.
Quattrucci's run would end in fifth when he ran nines into Docherty's aces, before De Visscher took a big three-bet pot against Docherty with two pair to establish a commanding lead, with Veldhoen also stretching ahead of Docherty and Hulme.
Docherty was left with crumbs and disposed of by Hulme, leaving De Visscher, Hulme, and Veldhoen all evenly matched.
There followed an intense period of three-handed combat between a trio of accomplished players, none of whom seemed likely to make a serious mistake. The lead changed hands on numerous occasions, but Veldhoen began to be left behind after he bet into De Visscher holding the nuts.
Veldhoen sustained further damage when he ran into De Visscher's cowboys, but the right conditions for two parties to want to risk it all at the same time would just not arise. De Visscher eventually established a commanding lead again when a hero-call from Hulme backfired, but Hulme soon fought back.
Something had to give, and the key moment duly arrived when Hulme three-bet jammed versus an open from De Visscher, and lost a flip.
After taking the first few pots of heads-up play and leaving Veldhoen with crumbs, De Visscher sealed the title with king-high versus queen-high.
Veldhoen was also overjoyed with a career-best score, and after hugging the champion he vaulted down the stairs to be embraced by his GRND On Tour colleagues, who had been backing him vociferously throughout.
That concludes our coverage of this event, with the next PokerStars Open stop scheduled for Malaga, running from June 22-28, 2026, and be sure to check out PokerNews coverage of tournaments from all over the world.
