When the paradise city of Thessaloniki saw the sunrise on Sunday morning, there was a very special, unique feeling in the atmosphere. This wasn’t your ordinary Sunday; it was the final day of the 2025 Greek Poker Odyssea, and the final day of the €600 Main Event.
The expectations were high, and the action at the Regency Casino would not disappoint. The 47 players who remained in the tournament entered Day 3 locked and loaded with their eyes on the prize: a €56,370 first-place payout, a one-of-a-kind trophy, and eternal Greek poker history. It was a day of absolutely bamboozling and mesmerizing poker, and in the end, victory belonged to the most tenacious.
Shuffle Up and Deal
The 2025 Greek Poker Odyssea, powered by NoviBet, had been no less than a roaring success up to the penultimate day. The Main Event was, naturally, the crown jewel of the event; 529 entries had created a €280,730 prize pool, and the tournament statistics prove that live poker is hotter than ever in Greece.
47 players managed to go through Day 2 and took their seats on Sunday. They had all reached the money during the previous day and were guaranteed to walk away €1,206 richer. Of course, they all aimed much, much higher than that.
It was an action-packed show from the get-go, to say the least. Some shorter stacks got their chips in the middle in rapid fashion, attempting to double up and have better presumptions for a deep run. This resulted in multiple players hitting the rail early. Before three tables remained, notable names such as 2025 NoviBet Poker Championship winner Ivan Popov, Greek poker legend Ivan Vlachov, and 2024 Battle of Malta winner Vasileios Zisis had already gone out.
One player who stood out at this stage was Anastasios Vardalis. He had entered Day 3 fifth in the chip counts and displayed all his poker skills to build an even larger stack. He wouldn’t stop winning, and eventually, he eliminated Andronikos Voliotis in seventeenth place to bring the remaining number of players down to sixteen. The two tables of eight players stayed idle for quite some time, before “the Ketchup Effect” occurred; when Vasileios Poziadis went out in sixteenth, players busted faster than the speed of lightning, and the final table was set before you could say “tzatziki”.
One Last Dance
The nine players took their new seats, and when entering the tournament’s final stage, Vardalis was the chip leader. Could his momentum carry him to victory? Time would tell.
Marios-Panagiotis Kapiris would soon become the first victim of the nine-handed finale, as he came up short against Aggelos Valilis. Presumably, this was to the rest of the table’s delight, seeing that Kapiris was one of the most experienced players still in the mix. Itzhak Cohen would shortly follow in eighth, as Dimitrios Siantikos had a superior kicker to go with his ace. Siantikos, by the way, had entered the final table as the shortest stack, but now had some playability with his newly won chips.
The next major thing to happen was when Ippokratis Aslanoglou won a flip and managed to take the bigger part of Ioannis Diamantopoulos’ stack. Diamantopoulos survived with three Big Blinds, and the other players at the table could smell the pay jump. However, Aggelos Valilis would lose a big pot the very next hand against Nikolaos Giannopoulos. Then, he would get his remaining chips in against Vardalis, and he did not manage to convert. Such, it was Valilis who bid farewell in seventh, while Diamantopoulos managed to get some extra dough with his eventual sixth-place finish.
The remaining five players then agreed to a deal, which saw Vardalis lock up the biggest slice of the cake. The contestants would continue to play for an additional €5,000 and the trophy. Things were getting serious at this point.
After Giannopoulos had been crippled against Valilis, he kept on losing some smaller pots. He managed to double up once against Vardalis by doing the old “Stand up, put on your jacket, and get ready to leave” trick, but eventually, he went out in fifth. Even though he did not get his hands on the trophy, he had locked up the second-most of the remaining prize pool after Vardalis.
Alexey Shilov had been short-stacked for a while, but managed to do an impressive job holding on to his remaining chips. Eventually, though, he would become the next victim as Siantikos hit a runner-runner flush to eliminate the Cypriot.
Three players remained then, and everyone was getting ready to follow the very exciting conclusion – except the players themselves. They decided half past two in the morning was enough and made a rather unconventional deal to end things. Siantikos and Aslanoglou split the €5,000 that the three were supposed to keep playing for, and chipleader Vardalis would be awarded the trophy. They shook hands, shared a laugh, and everyone seemed happy.
Not the ending that anyone expected, but when the dust had settled, Vardalis was named the winner of the tournament. What an impressive feat he had managed; he managed to convert his chip lead into the final table to a win, and he’d showcased some tremendous poker skills throughout the tournament. Hats off.
€600 Main Event – Final Table Results
| Place | Player | Country | Prize |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Anastasios Vardalis | Greece | €34,546* |
| 2 | Dimitrios Siantikos | Greece | €21,436* |
| 3 | Ippokratis Aslanoglou | Greece | €21,871* |
| 4 |  Alexey Shilov | Cyprus | €26,057* |
| 5 | Nikolaos Giannopoulos | Greece | €33,652* |
| 6 | Ioannis Diamantopoulos | Greece | €9,448 |
| 7 | Aggelos Valilis | Greece | €7,766 |
| 8 |  Itzhak Cohen | Italy | €6,420 |
| 9 | Marios-Panagiotis Kapiris | Greece | €5,327 |
That’s a wrap for the 2025 Greek Poker Odyssea. Organizers, staff, and players should all be very happy with the outcome; according to Greek poker media site Pokerland, the Main Event is the third-ever biggest tournament ever to be held on Greek soil. Apart from the Main Event, the festival held six side events, which were also very successful and appreciated by all poker enthusiasts. Thessaloniki is a poker paradise, and the Regency Casino is an utterly amazing venue. For sure, the bar is set for future live events in Greece.
