On Monday, the first two WSOP Circuit Ring Event winners were crowned during the 2025 WSOP Circuit Tallinn. Ring Event #1: the €350 Mini Main Event was the first tournament to kick off the whole festival, and it’s safe to say the interest was big. 2025 is the first year the Mini Main Event is ring-certified here in Tallinn, and a whopping 954 entries took up the fight for eternal poker glory.
After three days of play, it was Sweden’s Simon Hesserud Persson who emerged victorious. He built up a solid stack already on Day 1b, and he never really looked back. Simon was kind enough to spare ten minutes of his time for a short interview with the poker.pro live reporter.
While the initial start of the tournament was a rocky road for Simon, he managed to turn things around rather quickly:
“I late-registrated for Day 1b, perhaps three hours after the tournament had started. I went down to 12,000 from the 50,000 start stack fairly early. Then, I managed to triple up, and then double up, pretty much back-to-back.”
One of Simon’s strengths in live poker is his ability to adapt to the other players. While he considers himself a somewhat aggressive player in general, he’s very conscious of his opponent’s styles of play, and if needed, he’ll tighten up and wait for a better spot. Simon recalls one very crucial hand from Day 1b:
“I opened from middle position, and a somewhat crazy player called from the Cutoff. A short-stack then went all in, and when action came back to me, I decided to isolate with pocket sevens. I shoved almost 40 Big Blinds, but the Cutoff-player snap-called with jack-nine suit. Luckily, my sevens held up, and I now had one of the biggest stacks.”
A big stack might be an understatement. In fact, the Swede entered Day 2 with the second-most in chips. During the later stages of Day 1b, he managed to convert his 500,000 stack to 1,345,000, just by opening pretty much any hand and stealing chips from the more passive players. This gave him great presumptions for a deep run, and the lowest he got during Day 2 was still well above the average stack.
Needless to say, Day 2 was pretty rutine for Simon, and the next day, he entered the final table as third most in chips. Perhaps, some had Corne Scheel as the favorite to win the tournament; the Dutch chipleader had more than double of Norwegian Nicolai Austad, who was second in the counts. Simon, however, won the biggest pot of the tournament (at that particular stage) against Scheel. Doing so, he overtook the chiplead, and he never lost it on his way to the title.
Ring Event #1: €350 Mini Main Event – Final Table Results
| Place | Player | Country | Prize |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Simon Hesserud Persson | Sweden | €45,700 (Plus $5,000 Ticket to Paradise) |
| 2 |  Vytautas Riskevicius | Lithuania | €30,400 |
| 3 |  Nicolai Austad | Norway | €21,220 |
| 4 |  Corne Scheel | Netherlands | €15,140 |
| 5 |  Ville Keränen | Finland | €10,940 |
| 6 |  Krzysztof Chmielowski | Poland | €8,040 |
| 7 | Tobias Napel | Norway | €5,940 |
| 8 |  Oleksandr Shokur | Ukraine | €4,540 |
| 9 |  Jevgenijs Sapronenko | Latvia | € 3,493 |
The tournament victory means Simon secures the biggest cash of his career so far. He’s far from a novice, though; it’s his fourth live tournament win, and he’s also a prominent online player. After Tallinn, the next live poker adventure for Simon will be the 2025 Battle of Malta, October 28-November 5.
Simon is the third Swede to win a WSOP Circuit Ring. During the 2023 WSOP Circuit Tallinn, Alexander Hallenstam won the €660 PLO Hi-Lo. During last year’s festival, Martin “Franke” von Zweigbergk won the €350 8-Game. Not only did Simon win the coveted ring and €45,700; he also won a $5,000 Ticket to Paradise. That means he’ll pack his bags and travel to the 2025 WSOP Paradise, which will be played at the Bamahas, December 4-18.
He’s not done in Tallinn just yet, though. Simon is staying until the very end, and right now, he has a 170,000 stack in Ring Event #3: €555 NLH. With its 744 entries, it’s the biggest €555 tournament ever on Estonian soil. Will the Swede be able to win back-to-back WSOP Circuit Rings? Time will tell.
