Day 3 of Ring Event #5: €1,500 Main Event has wrapped up. The nine remaining players have bagged their chips, and they’ll be reunited with them tomorrow at 12:00, when the final table commences. Indeeed, tomorrow is the final day of he 2026 WSOP Circuit Tallinn, and it’s a bittersweet feeling. I’s surrealistic how fast these 10 days have gone past; le’s finish it all with a flurrish tomorrow.
poker.pro live reporter Christoffer Karlén covered Day 3 of the Main Event, and a small recap of today’s action seems fitting.
Twenty-four Becomes Nine
€1,500 buy-in, 977 enries, a €1,253,002 prize pool, and a €210,000 first-place payout. Those are the most noteworthy numbers of the Main Event during the 2026 WSOP Circuit Tallinn, and the tournament has most certainly delivered the action that it was expected to do. From the five starting-day flights, a total of 147 players made it through to Day 2. They were all guaranteed a €3,000 min-cash, but all of them aimed for something bigger than that.
Day 2 wrapped up with 24 players (i.e., three eight-handed tables), and those 24 reclaimed their seats at 12:00 today, August 1. Going into Day 3, there were some competent names in the mix, to say the least. Players such as Johan Karlsson (winner of the €1,100 Main Event during the 2020 Kings of Tallinn), Luka Sorainen (winner of Ring Event #7: €5,000 NLH during this festival), and Finnish poker legend Sampo Ryynanen all had made it to the penultimate day of the tournament. They took their seats at noon together with the other 21 players, ready to lock horns for eternal poker glory.
The day kicked off with the two sole Swedish-speaking players, Finland’s Rasmus Lundström (twentyfourth, €6,620) and the aforementioned Karlsson (twentythird, €7,980) bidding farewell during the first hour. The next one to go was Kristjan Aru (twentysecond, €7,980) before Sorainen followed in twentyfirst for the same prize. Considering the skillset he possesses, it’s an educated guess the remaining players were thrilled to see the virtouso Sorainen bust.
Next up, Norwegians Martin Studzinski (twentieth) and Sander Östlyngen (nineteenth) too cashed for €7,980. There was still some hope for an Estonian to claim the title with three players still in. Their adventure on home soil would soon come to an end, though, as all three of them went out back-to-back-to-back for €7,980 (Kristjan-Jaan Kosk in eighteenth, Ignacio Garrido in seventeenth, and Anton Makejev in sixteenth).
Denmark’s Timmy Anker went out in fifteenth, and he was the first one to bust during the €9,800 payout level. Tomi Hietala (fourteenth) and Jussi Julkunen (thirteenth) followed thereafter, before a third Finn went out in twelfth, which meant the remaining 11 players were all guaranteed €12,270. The third Finn was Ryynanen, who arguably was the most experienced player left in the field with over $1,700,000 in total live earnings according to The Hendon Mob.
About an hour passed before the last Norwegian in the field, Lasse Hansen, was eliminated in eleventh place. All of his chips went to Lithuania’s Egidijus Matonis, who’d been running hot (and playing well, for that matter) all day. Having the chip lead, perhaps it was Matonis’ plan to put immense ICM-pressure on the remaining players. He didn’t have time to be too aggressive, though, as the day soon would come to an end. It was France’s Hugo Loustau who got his stack in the middle with Q♦J♦ against Mateusz Dabkowski’s 7♣7♥. The board spelled out 10♦6♣10♥K♠5♦, and queen-high was rendered useless. That is when Day 3 came to an end, and the remaining nine players could exhale.
The Stage is set
As such, the stage is now set for tomorrow’s final table. It is indeed Matonis who will be the chip leader going into the final table with 12,300,000. Just a few months ago, Matonis finished seventh in the €1,100 Main Event during the 2026 OlyBet Showdown Tallinn; in other words, he has proved that he can put all his poker skills on full display on Estonian soil. He’ll have his work cut out for him, though; Spainn’s David Marfil is breathing down Matonis’ neck with 10,600,000, and he’s been playing sublime poker the tournament througout.
They are the two players with an eight-digit stack going into the final table, but with the sublime tournament structure, anything can happen. Finland’s Kai Lehto is sixth in the chip counts, and he’s the one player remaining with more than $1,000,000 total live earnings on The Hendon Mob. Then there’s Denmark’s Fehim Hajdari, with more than $700,000 earned throughout his career.
Meanwhile, Netherlands’ Roy van der Reijnst might be looking for some redemption; during the 2025 WSOP Circuit Tallinn, he came second in Ring Event #555: €555 NLH. In other words, he’s been very close to claiming a prestigious WSOP Circuit Ring, and he’s fully determined to get the job done this time. Speaking of redemption, Valentin Imperatore might seek to take vengeance for France after Lousteau’s final table bubble. Imperatore will be the short stack going into the final table, but, again, anything can happen.
Add Julian Selinger, Mateusz Dabkowski, and Feras Abid to the list, and there’s the nine-handed final table. It’s going to be a quite thrilling conclusion, and a fitting way to wrap up the 2026 WSOP Circuit Tallinn.
The final table will be live streamed on OlyBet Poker’s YouTube channel, and the poker.pro live blog will follow the delay. Both medias will go live at 12:30 tomorrow; see you all then. Below is the seat draw and the chip counts for the final table.
| Seat | Player | Country | Chips |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Roy Van Der Reijnsst | Netherlands | 3,000,000 |
| 2 |  Mateusz Dabkowski | Poland | 3,800,000 |
| 3 |  Fehim Hajdari | Denmark | 6,100,000 |
| 4 |  Julian Selinger | Austria | 6,500,000 |
| 5 |  Kai Lehto | Finland | 3,400,000 |
| 6 |  Valentin Imperatore | France | 1,400,000 |
| 7 | Feras Abid | Finland | 1,800,000 |
| 8 |  Egidijus Matonis | Lithuania | 12,300,000 |
| 9 |  David Marfil | Spain | 10,600,000 |
