Seat 4: Sacha Cohen, 27, Marrakech (50,400,000)
A now familiar face on the French poker scene, Sacha Cohen wears many hats: member of the Winamax Stream Gang, coach of the Queens Squad team, and a regular on the mid-stakes live circuit… The Marrakech-based player is everywhere.
The son of one of France’s first recognized pros, Claude Cohen (WSOP champion back in 1997), Sacha is quick to point out that his father didn’t directly introduce him to the game. “I was more intrigued than anything,” he explains.
Because Sacha’s true passion growing up was Call of Duty. After competing in several LAN events, he seized an opportunity to become a live commentator for esports. From there, he swapped keyboard and mouse for a microphone, focusing on analysis and commentary, appearing on TV channels. At that point, poker was only a hobby, but with his competitive mindset, he was determined to study the game seriously.
“I’m a really bad loser, that’s what pushes me to work hard so I can compete with my opponents, whatever the game,” he said.
Alongside his studies and his work as a commentator, he began playing poker more and more regularly, eventually discovering live Winamax events at WPO Dublin in 2018. “The fun, the atmosphere… that’s when I realized this was the environment I wanted to be in.”
Still, Sacha was only at the beginning of his journey. Early on, his bankroll management was shaky and his technical play inconsistent. He often played above his means. The turning point came when he won a €2,000 tournament, earning his first five-figure score. “From that moment, I set myself a level of discipline that gradually allowed me to transition into professional poker.”
Now a pro player, Sacha enters the final stretch of the Grande Finale as the overwhelming chip leader, after racking up eliminations late on Day 3. A standout performance that began with four bullets before his tournament truly took off, ending Day 1f with 675,000 chips.
The next two days followed a similar pattern: quadrupling his stack in the first hour, then grinding through long periods of stagnation. “Except this time, I had a crazy final half-hour. I went from 19 million to 50.4 million in just thirty minutes after the last break.”
And what a surge it was. Sacha ran over the field, notably winning a huge pot against Loïc Sa with pocket tens against pocket eights, building the massive stack that now puts him firmly in the top spot.
A comfortable position, no doubt, but far from a guarantee. Just ask Pierre-Louis Quandalle in 2025, who was the chip leader at the beginning of the final table but finished 8th.
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