$400 No-Limit Hold’em
Prize Pool: $398,970 | Structure | Payouts
Level 14: 3,000/5,000 with a 5,000 ante
Players Remaining: 154 of 1,209
The opening event of the 2026 Winter Poker Open drew 1,209 entries for the $400 buy-in tournament and 153 players return today at 11 am for Day 2. Technically 154 but Shannon Johnson used the best-stack-forward structure to bag twice, getting a min-cash for the small stack and playing the biggest.
They are each guaranteed at least $710 but a huge $65,940 payout for the top spot. A great return on the $400 investment.
Joshua Pitz bagged huge last night and returns with more than one million chips in his stack, with William Deckard, Imre Papp, Jerome Leonardo, and Carlo Amenta rounding out the top five.
Flight A bagged much earlier than the rest of them so everyone today return to nearly a full level at 3,000/5,000 with 5,000 ante and an average stack around 47 bigs.
Top ten returning stacks:
- Joshua Pitz – 1,028,000 (206 bb)
- William Deckard – 756,000 (151 bb)
- Imre Papp – 701,000 (140 bb)
- Jerome Leonardo – 699,000 (140 bb)
- Carlo Amenta – 680,000 (136 bb)
- Manny Minaya – 663,000 (133 bb)
- Dustin Geselius – 514,000 (103 bb)
- Josh Babcock – 508,000 (102 bb)
- Thomas Minnich-Weber – 506,000 (101 bb)
- Robert Thomas – 500,000 (100 bb)