The Festival Weekend, in partnership with OlyBet Poker, arrived for four days of poker fun at Olympic Voodoo Casino on Thursday, September 10, completing the Baltic trilogy that began in Vilnius in May, continued in Tallinn in July, and now brings its final chapter to Latvia’s capital for the first time. Three cities, three festivals, one series is what The Festival Weekends were all about.
Three events were decided on opening day, with Finland’s Ville Hakala claiming the PLO4/PLO5 Bomb Pot Feature, Sweden’s Robert Kjellström taking every chip in the Casino Blackjack Tournament in winner-takes-all fashion, and Finland’s Toni Muhonen adding his name to the Progressive Bounty results sheet. The €555 Mystery Bounty Main Event also got underway, with Sweden’s Farshad Varahram bagging the overnight chip lead from Day 1A. Day 1B and Day 1C run Friday, with the Final Day on Saturday when the mystery bounty envelopes will be opened.
The Festival Weekend is a four-day compact format built for players who want serious poker without a ten-day commitment. Founded by Martin “Franke” von Zweigbergk, the series runs mixed games, casino formats, and unique headline events alongside the €555 Mystery Bounty Main Event, and it has carved out a loyal following across the Nordics and Baltics since its expansion into the region. After Vilnius and Tallinn, Riga is the third Baltic capital to host a Festival Weekend, and the reception at Olympic Voodoo Casino on opening day suggested the Latvian poker community has been waiting for it.
- Read more: Riga, You’re Next: The Festival Weekend Arrives at Olympic Voodoo Casino September 10-13
- Read more: Ville-Matti Keränen Wins The Festival Weekend Tallinn €555 Main Event Mystery Bounty
- Read more: Gerardas Lukšėnas Wins The Festival Weekend Vilnius Main Event
- Read more: Your Guide to the 2026 OlyBet Showdown Riga Voodoo Autumn Edition (September 19-27)
Ville Hakala Wins €350 PLO4/PLO5 Bomb Pot Feature
The PLO4/PLO5 Bomb Pot Feature opened the Riga schedule in style, with the rotating format drawing 15 entries for a €4,418 prize pool, looking to mix things up on the opening evening.
The Bomb Pot Feature is one of The Festival Weekend’s most popular recurring side events, and the format rewards players who can handle chaos at short notice. The game rotates between PLO4 and PLO5 each button round, with a bomb pot built into each round (where every player posts a mandatory bet before cards are dealt and action jumps straight to the flop). There is no preflop decision on those hands: the pot is already built, and the postflop action in a four- or five-card Omaha game with a bomb pot base tends to be explosive by design. The format has become a fixture across The Festival Series schedule, drawing PLO regulars and curious Hold’em players in equal measure.
Finland’s Ville Hakala emerged from the field to claim the top prize of €2,205. Hakala is a name that carries weight in Northern European poker. He won the 2023 Coolbet Open Main Event for €60,000, one of the more prestigious titles on the Baltic live circuit. The three players who cashed have combined live earnings of more than €1 million, per The Hendon Mob, a number that reflects just how well-known this player pool is across the Nordic and Baltic scene.
| Place | Player | Country | Prize |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st |  Ville Hakala | Finland | €2,205 |
| 2nd |  Juris Bonders | Latvia | €1,333 |
| 3rd | Kaspars Renga | Latvia | €880 |
Robert Kjellström Wins Entire Prize Pool in €150 Casino Blackjack Tournament
The winner-takes-all format meant there was only one prize on offer, and Sweden’s Robert Kjellström claimed every cent of it.
The Casino Blackjack Tournament is exactly what the Festival Weekend is about: something you cannot find on a standard poker tour schedule. The winner-takes-all format means every chip matters from the first hand, and the €150 buy-in keeps the field broad. Sweden’s Robert Kjellström ran the table and left with every cent of the €2,346 prize pool, the only player to cash from the 19-entry field because there was only one prize to claim.
The field included some familiar faces. Aleksandrs Gaisenoks bubbled in second with nothing to show for it, a painful way to go in a winner-takes-all format. Ole Johnny Karlsen, a regular at Festival events and well-known on the Northern European circuit, took third.
The Festival crew were not just watching. Franke fired three bullets trying to get there. Melvin Schroen played two. Videographer Nikita Valts gave it one shot before calling it a day. None of them made it, with Kjellström being the casino star of the day.
| Place | Player | Country | Prize |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st |  Robert Kjellström | Sweden | €2,346 |
Toni Muhonen Wins €200 NLH Progressive Bounty
The Progressive Bounty drew the largest field on opening day, combining a standard prize pool with bounties that accumulate with every elimination. The event drew 62 entries for €10,013 in prizes, including €6,293 in the prize pool plus another €3,720 in bounties.
The Progressive Bounty draws the largest field on opening day and delivers two prizes for the price of one: a share of the standard prize pool and a bounty payout every time you eliminate a player. In this format, each player carries a bounty, half of which goes to the eliminator and half rolls forward to grow the winner’s final prize. Finland’s Toni Muhonen navigated the 62-entry field and collected the biggest bounty of all at the end, and the result was his largest live cash prize, per The Hendon Mob.
In this progressive bounty format, both Muhonen and Latvia’s Artjoms Skvarkovskis earned the €1,560 top prize from the prize pool, plus any bounties collected along the way. Muhonen defeated his opponent to win the title and the final big bounty.
| Place | Player | Country | Prize |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | Toni Muhonen | Finland | €1,560 |
| 2nd | Artjoms Skvarkovskis | Latvia | €1,560 |
| 3rd | Kaspars Mallons | Latvia | €1,010 |
| 4th | Dita Upeniece | Latvia | €713 |
| 5th | Ēriks Caune | Latvia | €510 |
| 6th | Jevgēnijs Kritiņins | Latvia | €400 |
| 7th | Juho Härkönen | Finland | €310 |
| 8th | Kaspars Jakubonis | Latvia | €230 |
Farshad Varahram Leads €555 Main Event Mystery Bounty After Day 1A
Forty-two players entered Day 1A of the €555 Mystery Bounty Main Event on Thursday, with €11,550 added to the prize pool and €8,400 added to the mystery bounty pool, producing €19,950 in total collected prizes from the opening flight. Sweden’s Farshad Varahram bagged the overnight chip lead with an impressive 658,000 from a starting stack of 40,000, ahead of Latvia’s Kristaps Renga on 371,000 and Lithuania’s Joris Serva on 313,000.
Day 1B runs Friday at 13:00 and Day 1C (a turbo flight) fires at 19:00. The Final Day is Saturday, when the surviving stacks combine, and the mystery bounty envelopes are finally opened. This is where the format produces its moments: sealed envelopes containing cash prizes of varying sizes, revealed only when a player is eliminated. Nobody knows what they are carrying until someone busts them.
The Main Event has previous winners worth knowing. At The Festival Weekend Vilnius in May, Lithuania’s Gerardas Lukšėnas won the €555 NLH Main Event PKO from a 159-entry field for €7,905. At The Festival Weekend Tallinn in July, Finland’s Ville-Matti Keränen won the €555 Mystery Bounty Main Event for €12,660 in official prize money plus €13,500 in bounties. Riga gets its chance on Saturday.
| Position | Player | Country | Chips |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | Farshad Varahram | Sweden | 658,000 |
| 2nd | Kristaps Renga | Latvia | 371,000 |
| 3rd |  Joris Serva | Lithuania | 313,000 |
| 4th | Matas Sketerski | Lithuania | 175,000 |
| 5th | Martynas Zaremba | Lithuania | 123,000 |
Friday at The Festival Weekend Riga
Friday is the biggest day of the festival. Day 1B of the €555 Mystery Bounty Main Event fires at 1 p.m., with Day 1C (a turbo flight at 7 p.m.) giving latecomers a fast track into Day 2. Sweden’s Farshad Varahram leads the overnight survivors from Day 1A with 658,000, but the field will more than double before play resumes on Saturday. Latvia’s Kristaps Renga, Lithuania’s Joris Serva, and two more Lithuanian players round out the Day 1A top five, giving the Latvian and Lithuanian contingents plenty of reason to follow events closely through the weekend.
Alongside the Main Event flights, Friday brings two more title events. The €350 PLO4/PLO5 PKO fires at 2 p.m., adding a progressive knockout layer to the same button-round bomb-pot format that produced Ville Hakala’s title on Thursday. Friday evening closes with the €150 OmahaJack at 9 p.m..
| Time | Event |
|---|---|
| 12:00 | Event #6: €30 Satellite to Main Event (Unl. Rebuys + Add-on, 2 Seats GTD) |
| 13:00 | Event #3: €555 Main Event Mystery Bounty: Day 1B |
| 14:00 | Event #7: €350 PLO4/PLO5 PKO (Button Round Each, 8-Handed) |
| 19:00 | Event #3: €555 Main Event Mystery Bounty: Day 1C (Turbo) |
| 21:00 | Event #8: €150 OmahaJack |
The Final Day is Saturday at noon, when the mystery bounty envelopes open for the first time. Sunday brings the €200 NLH Sunday Brunch with an added package to The Festival Tallinn 2026 (November 20-29 at Olympic Park Casino), plus a €30 satellite at 15:00 guaranteeing two €550 tickets directly into The Festival Tallinn Main Event.
And Then Riga Keeps Going
The OlyBet Showdown Riga Voodoo Autumn Edition opens September 19 at Olympic Voodoo Casino, just six days after The Festival Weekend closes. Nine days, 26 events, a €1,100 NLH Main Event, and a €555 NLH Championship. For anyone already in Riga this weekend, the case for staying is straightforward. All coverage from The Festival Weekend Riga is published daily at poker.pro and at OlyBetEvents.com in partnership with OlyBet.
- Photos courtesy of The Festival Series
- Article originally produced at poker.pro.
