Resilience Pays of for "LuckyChewy" with PokerGO Cup $15,000 Victory for $257,400
After a red-hot start to the year on the PokerGO Tour (PGT) that included a runner-up finish in the $1 million freeroll and a victory in a PGT Kickoff event, Andrew Lichtenberger had just one cash PokerGO Cup heading into the series finale.
But "LuckyChewy" stayed focused and it paid off with a victory in Event #10: $15,000 NLH to win $257,400 and the final trophy of the series. Lichtenberger overcame an overwhelming chip lead by fellow PokerGO Studio regular Sam Soverel, who earned $163,800 for his runner-up finish.
The finale, the highest buy-in event of the series, drew 52 runners for a prize pool of $780,000. The final table also included 2015 WSOP Main Event champion Joe McKeehen, WPT champ Arthur Peacock, longtime Canadian grinder John Krpan, and overall series champion Brock Wilson.
Event #10 Final Table Results
| Place | Player | Country | Prize |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Andrew Lichtenberger | United States | $257,400 |
| 2 | Sam Soverel | United States | $163,800 |
| 3 | Arthur Peacock | United States | $109,200 |
| 4 | Joe McKeehen | United States | $78,000 |
| 5 | John Krpan | Canada | $62,400 |
| 6 | Brock Wilson | United States | $46,800 |
| 7 | Joey Weissman | United States | $31,200 |
"Restoring Agency"
Resilient is one way to describe Lichtenberger this series, and a major heads-up chip deficit didn't stop the high-stakes pro and holistic poker coach from closing out and knocking out every opponent at Day 2's final table.
"I just always try to do my best and just put one foot in front of the other," he told PokerNews in a winner's interview. "I think it's important to be resilient as a tournament player."
Lichtenberger said altering your mindset at the poker table can be a way of "restoring agency" and to "sort of take matters into your own hands."
"I think it's very unhelpful to play poker in a way where you feel entitled to win, so I just try to accept everything that happens to me, and just to extract whatever beneficial lesson or effect from anything that occurs. So I think that's really helped me, increasingly so, over the course of my career, where if I lose, I just look for ways that I could have done better in all aspects."
Day 2 Action
While the event still needed to play out today, the overall series leaderboard race had already been decided. Brock Wilson clinched the victory late Saturday after making the money and following the eliminations of Ben Grise and Filipp Khavin.
But the red-hot Wilson, who won Event #4 and Event #6, couldn't get anything going at the final table and fell in sixth place before going to pose for portrait shots with the massive silver PokerGO Cup.
McKeehen, the only WSOP Main Event champion in the field, bowed out in fourth place as his king-queen was crushed by the turned Wheel of the eventual champion.
Lichtenberger kept his foot on the gas and eliminated Peacock, but things shifted during heads-up play when Soverel won a half-dozen consecutive pots to have Chewy on the ropes. But Lichtenberger quickly turned things back around and secured the victory and his latest poker title.
That wraps up PokerNews' coverage of an eventful 2026 PokerGO Cup in Las Vegas. Check out the live reporting portal to see other highlights from the series.