Ponakovs and Piekawicz Wrap EPT Monte Carlo With Late Wins

The action at the 2026 PokerStars European Poker Tour Monte Carlo festival is officially over. The rooms have emptied, the long-tenured PokerStars commentary career of Joe Stapleton has come to an end, and all the money there was to be won has been collected.

Roman Stoica won the EPT Monte Carlo main event for $965,250, joining Alex Kulev, Dejan Kaladjurdjevic, Joris Ruijs, Orpen Kisacikoglu, and Daniel Dvoress as some of the series’ biggest winners.

But before the final cards were dealt, two more players laid claim to their own PokerStars spade trophies in the final days of action. Latvia’s Aleksejs Ponakovs and Brazil’s Kelvin Kerber chopped a €25,000 no-limit hold’em high roller with an impressive 200-player field. And in a single-day event, another prominent Brazilian, Alisson Piekawicz, took down a single-day €25,000 buy-in event.

At the end of a festival with multiple seven-figure winners, here’s how the last of the high-stakes action played out.

Ponakovs Pushes Past $40 Million

Aleksejs Ponakovs crossed $1 million in recorded career tournament earnings in mid-2020, and from that point on, he’s been one of the most successful tournament poker players in the world. He’s a three-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner and a Triton champion, with nine seven-figure cashes since mid-2022.

While he earned his ninth overall seven-figure cash earlier in the festival, Ponakovs missed out on number 10 by the narrowest of margins late in the series at EPT Monte Carlo. The Latvian poker pro claimed victory in a multi-day €25,000 no-limit hold’em event, earning a first-place prize of $982,133 following a heads-up deal with Kelvin Kerber. The win pushed Ponakovs’ total recorded earnings to $40,964,727.

For Kerber, it was his second high roller runner-up finish at the 2026 EPT Monte Carlo festival, joining his result in a €50,000 buy-in tournament.

Ponakovs’ sixth qualifying cash in the 2026 Card Player Player of the Year race was worth 1,260 points. That increased his total for the year to 3,100 points, which is good for seventh place overall on the leaderboard, presented by CoinPoker, heading into the busiest time of the year. Kerber’s second-place finish, worth 1,050 points, elevated him to 14th place in the standings.

The 200 entrants created a total prize pool of $5,618,340, with 31 players finishing in the money. A pair of WSOP main event champions, Espen Jorstad (29th) and Hossein Ensan (12th), cashed in this event. They were joined by Davidi Kitai (30th), Dario Sammartino (24th), Nick Petrangelo (11th), Govert Metaal (7th), and Fahredin Mustafov (4th) among the in-the-money finishers. Two women, Rania Nasreddine (27th), and Jessica Teusl (20th), cashed in this high-stakes event.

Final Table Results

Piekazewicz Adds Another Trophy To Strong 2026 Campaign

Alisson Piekazewicz hit a major milestone in March, capturing his first career Triton Poker title and a total of $1,909,000 in a $40,000 mystery bounty tournament. Piekazewicz added his second title of the year, and third career PokerStars spade trophy, in a single-day €25,000 no-limit hold’em event in Monte Carlo.

Piekazewicz won $332,918, following a heads-up deal with Jamil Wakil. Wakil took home $316,631 for second place. For his win, Piekazewicz earned 336 Card Player POY points, pushing his total for 2026 to 1,596, good for 88th place overall.

There were 37 total entries and 29 unique players in this single-day tournament. Five players reached the money, including third-place finisher Juan Pardo. Pardo made three high roller final tables at EPT Monte Carlo, and now sits just inside the top 100 in the 2026 POY standings.

Final Table Results

Photo credits: Rational Intellectual Holdings Ltd. / Jules Pochy.