The Muck · WSOP Daily Brief
Day 80
The Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open finished on Tuesday and produced something that had never happened once in the history of the festival: three separate players won four tournaments apiece. Raminder Singh's four titles paid him $33,942 combined, which is less than the ninth-place money at the Championship event Joe McKeehen won the same week. McKeehen's own $462,600 was mostly an ICM chop, with $40,000 and a guitar trophy actually in dispute. Elsewhere the WSOP Circuit opens in Atlantic City today and the WSOP has not published a word about it, and PokerStars stops being PokerStars in the United Kingdom this morning. Three days until real bracelets.
Story 01 of 6
The 2026 Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open closed Tuesday in Hollywood, Florida after 63 events. Per PokerNews, no player had ever won four events in a single SHRP festival. This year three did. Raminder Singh got there first and is now the all-time SHRP titles record holder with 20. Jean Laurent matched him two days later. Mehmet Siginc completed the set hours after PokerNews published a story saying two players had done it, taking the $3,000 Big 4 Deep Stack for $92,017 via a three-way chop. Yuval Bronshtein, who did not win four, won two in the closing days, the $800 DeepStack Big O for $18,432 and the $600 T.O.E. for $9,535, moving him to 18 career SHRP titles and second place all time, two behind Singh. Adding up the full results table PokerNews published: 63 events, 15,835 total entries, $12,137,870 in combined prize pools. We have not seen that total printed anywhere.
Why it mattersHere is the part that says what this festival actually is. Singh's four wins paid $6,385, $8,374, $10,978 and $8,205, for a combined $33,942. Darren Rabinowitz finished ninth in one tournament that week and made $51,000. Four championships at one series is worth less than one bad final table, because the events Singh won were $300 and $400 turbos and quad stacks with two-hour registration windows, and the schedule ran 63 of them in fifteen days. That is not a knock on Singh, who is now the winningest player in the history of the series and clearly knows exactly what he is doing. It is a statement about what a title means when a festival prints 63 of them. The reason nobody had ever won four before is not that nobody was good enough. It is that until recently there were not enough tournaments to win four of.
Story 02 of 6
The 2015 world champion won the $5,300 SHRPO Championship on Tuesday, one of 673 entries in a tournament that built a $3,262,704 prize pool. The final table was not soft: Loni Hui, who McKeehen busted in third for $250,000 with queens over eights, and Darren Rabinowitz, ninth for $51,000, who won a bracelet in Las Vegas this summer by denying Phil Hellmuth a shot at number 18. Heads-up against David Greufe, the two agreed to an ICM chop for most of the prize pool before a card was dealt, leaving $40,000 and the SHRPO Guitar Tower Trophy live. McKeehen then lost his big lead, fell to worse than 10-to-1 down, rivered a flush to start back, took the lead when Greufe bluffed into his nut flush, and closed it out winning a 60/40. Final numbers: McKeehen $462,600, Greufe $390,804. Back the $40,000 out and the ICM split was $422,600 to $390,804. McKeehen is now past $22 million in Hendon Mob cashes.
Why it mattersEvery account of this tournament will report a $71,796 gap between first and second. The actual gap the two players created for themselves was $40,000, agreed to in advance, and the rest of the swing was already locked before the 10-to-1 comeback that makes the story worth telling. That is not a criticism of chopping, which is correct play with that much money and that much variance in front of you. It is a note about how tournament poker gets written up. A ten-to-one comeback for a trophy and forty grand is a better story than a ten-to-one comeback for four hundred and sixty-two thousand dollars, because it is the one that actually happened, and because it means both men were playing for the thing rather than the money. Greufe, whose first significant tournament score this was, walked with $390,804 and no trophy.
Story 03 of 6
We counted the winners column in the 63-event results table at the bottom of the PokerNews SHRPO wrap. Raminder Singh appears four times, at events #10, #15, #42 and #49. Jean Laurent appears four times, at #7, #17, #45 and #51. Mehmet Siginc appears three times, at #25 ($600 Deep Stack PLO, $29,000), #48 ($800 Deep Stack NLH/PLO Mix, $14,105) and #52 ($3,000 Big 4 Deep Stack, $92,017). The article body says Siginc won four. The table it sits above lists three. One of the two is wrong and we cannot tell which from the page. While we were counting, three other things fell out of the same table: event #45 is dated 8/7/2027, event #32 is listed as '$300 Qud Stack NLH,' and the Championship final table has ninth place going to 'Darren Rabninowitz,' a player spelled correctly two paragraphs earlier in the same article.
Why it mattersThe four-wins-each claim is the entire news hook. It is in the lede, it is the reason the story ran, and it is the thing every aggregator will repeat this week. It rests on a count that the article's own primary document does not support for one of the three players. This is almost certainly a missing row rather than a wrong claim, because Siginc winning a fourth is the sort of thing a tournament director confirms on the spot. But it is also the sort of thing that should be reconciled before publication rather than after somebody counts. The typos are cosmetic and we are only listing them because they establish that the table was pasted rather than read. A results table is the only permanent record most of these tournaments will ever have. Somebody's fourth title is either in it or it is not.
Story 04 of 6
Per Card Player's schedule page, the 2026 WSOP Circuit at Harrah's Resort Atlantic City runs August 13 to 24 with 18 ring events, opening today with a $400 No-Limit Hold'em carrying a $50,000 guarantee and the $400 opener of a four-day event guaranteeing $300,000. The $1,700 Main Event starts August 20 over five days with a $600,000 guarantee. WSOP.com has published nothing about it. Search that site for Atlantic City and what comes back is 'THE WSOP CIRCUIT RETURNS TO HARRAH'S ATLANTIC CITY FOR FIRST-TIME IN FIVE YEARS,' bylined August 14, 2025 with a May 14, 2025 dateline, covering last year's series: August 14 to 25, 18 events, a $1,700 Main with a $500,000 guarantee across three flights, and WSOP Paradise 2025 packages for every ring winner. The operator's news index has not moved since August 6. Meanwhile the Cherokee stop is still running through August 17, which means two WSOP Circuit series with the same $1,700 Main Event buy-in overlap for five days, one guaranteeing $2 million and the other $600,000.
Why it mattersA player deciding between Cherokee and Atlantic City this week has one operator page that is a year out of date, one Card Player grid, and no press release. That is a real decision with $1.4 million of guarantee separating two identically priced tournaments, and the company that owns both is not publishing on either. The stale page is the worse problem. It is dated August 14, 2025 in the byline and May 14, 2025 in the body, it describes a series that starts the day after tomorrow if you read the dates without the year, and it ranks. We nearly wrote a Cherokee story off the same trap this morning: WSOP.com's top Cherokee result is a 2025 preview promising 18 events from August 7 to 18 with a $1.5 million Main Event guarantee, while this year's Cherokee is 20 events from August 6 to 17 with a $2 million guarantee. Two different series, two different years, one search results page.
Story 05 of 6
As of today, August 13, Betfair Poker customers access poker through a co-branded client called PokerStars on Betfair, running PokerStars software on the Betfair platform. PokerStars' own UK-registered customers migrate to the same client later this year on a date that has not been announced. Non-UK players are unaffected. Paddy Power Poker and Sky Poker are scheduled to replace their own poker products with PokerStars software in the coming months, all of it feeding what parent company Flutter calls the PokerStars Network. UK players keep access to the global pool, the Sunday Million, SCOOP, WCOOP and EPT qualifiers. PokerStars Chief Commercial Officer Mike Woodbridge, quoted by PokerNews: 'A patchwork of regulations from one market to the next has fragmented the global game and led us to make difficult decisions to exit certain markets and not enter others. Players have felt it through thinner fields and smaller tournament prizes on our site.' Flutter has run this model already with Sisal and SNAI in Italy and FanDuel in North America.
Why it mattersRead the Woodbridge quote again, because operators do not usually say that part out loud. That is the largest poker brand in the world stating on the record that its fields got thin and its prizes got small, and that the fix is to stop being a destination and start being an engine other people's front ends run on. Whether that is good for players depends entirely on a number nobody has published: how many Betfair, Paddy Power and Sky poker customers actually exist to be poured in. If the answer is large, UK grinders get better games for free. If it is small, this is a cost exercise with a liquidity story attached, and the brand on the door changed for nothing. What is not in dispute is the direction. PokerStars is going the way of the PokerStars Network in Italy and PokerStars on FanDuel in the States, which is to say it is becoming software.
Story 06 of 6
PokerStars confirmed yesterday that the 2026 MicroMillions runs August 16 to 31: 139 events, more than $2 million guaranteed, buy-ins from $1.10 to $22. The $11 Sunday Storm and the $22 High Roller each guarantee $75,000 on August 16 and again on August 23, and the $22 PKO Main Event starting August 30 guarantees $250,000. It begins as the WCOOP Boot Camp ends on August 17 and finishes a week before WCOOP opens on September 6. Last year's MicroMillions Main Event drew 20,600 entrants and paid Brazil's 'pretinhouva' $25,911 including bounties; the 2024 edition went to another Brazilian, 'vinivarella22,' for $28,319 after a three-way chop.
Why it mattersAugust 16 is now the busiest day of the online year. GGPoker opens 33 bracelet events that morning. PokerStars opens 139 MicroMillions events the same morning, on the same continent-spanning global pool, having just told the market it is restructuring around liquidity. The two products are not competing for the same player, and that is the point: a $700 WSOP Kick-Off and a $1.10 MicroMillions event are aimed at opposite ends of a bankroll. What is genuinely worth watching is the funnel. MicroMillions ends August 31 and WCOOP opens September 6, with the stated purpose of the cheap series being to build a roll for the expensive one. PokerStars has now published a full MicroMillions schedule and still has not published a single WCOOP event with 24 days to go. The bankroll builder has a schedule. The thing you are building the bankroll for does not.
All from the $5,300 SHRPO Championship final table in Hollywood, Florida, which played to a finish on Tuesday. Note that first and second had agreed an ICM chop before heads-up play began, so the listed prizes for those two are the chop plus the $40,000 they left in dispute.
First big score of his tournament career. Held a better than 10-to-1 chip lead heads-up and lost it, then bluffed into McKeehen's nut flush. Kept the ICM money, lost the $40,000 and the guitar.
Busted by McKeehen, pocket eights into pocket queens. Also won the $800 PLO8 earlier in the same festival for $17,591.
Won a bracelet in Las Vegas this summer by beating Phil Hellmuth to it. His ninth-place money here is more than Raminder Singh made winning four tournaments at the same series. PokerNews spelled him 'Rabninowitz' in the results table.
Fourth of 673 entries in a $3,262,704 prize pool.
Won the $5,300 SHRPO Championship Tuesday for $462,600 and passed $22 million in Hendon Mob cashes. Whether this moves either Player of the Year board is unknown to us; we found no updated standings published today.
Won four events at one Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open, which had never been done, and took the career record to 20 titles. Combined take for the four: $33,942.
Closed the series with two wins in two days, the $800 DeepStack Big O and the $600 T.O.E., for $27,967 combined. Two behind Singh.
Last figure we verified was 7,109 points, and we found no refreshed leaderboard today. Nothing has run since that plausibly moves the top of that board.
Last verified figure 3,410 points. The Main Event finished eight days ago and we still cannot confirm that official WSOP POY points for it have posted. Sixth consecutive brief flagging this.
No new tournament activity in our sources since the ESPN finale. None of the 33 WSOP Online bracelets or the 20 Paradise bracelets have a published POY point value, so what is left of his 2026 is still unquantifiable.