Day 7 of the 2025 Pure Poker Tour Series #2 is complete and some familiar faces found their way to the top of the payouts. Eric Wasylenko is a former Player of the Year here on the PPT, and has won multiple Player of the Series titles, back when that was a thing. Tony Ma hasn’t hit the top spot on the tour quite as much as Wasy, but the well-liked local player is a regular on the tour and already had a final table run in Event #6, where he finished 7th.
It was a relatively small day on the PPT on Wednesday as the High Roller drew a smaller-than-expected crowd. The side event, the $560 NLH game that started at 3 PM, saw better numbers with a final field of 72, but both games were a little smaller than the pre-series estimates.
Ma Takes Event #9: $2,000 High Roller
| Event 9: | $2,000 High Roller Day 1 ($1,800 + $200/$100 for early entries) |
| Date: | May 20/21, 4 PM/1 PM |
| Blinds: | 40 Minutes |
| Starting Stack: | 40k |
| Entries: | 18 |
| Prizes (Winner): | $30,780 (Tony Ma, $16,620 after Deal) |
The High Roller game kicked off on Tuesday at 4 PM with nine levels of Day 1 play. Action resumed at 1 PM on Wednesday with entries still open for two levels on Day 2.
Most new entries took advantage of the discounted reg-fee before the start of play on Day 2, and because of the numbers, staff chose to refund $100 to the later rebuys on Day 2 as well. In the end, 18 entries were recorded for the $2k game, and Tony Ma was the eventual winner.
There were three prizes at the end of this one, but it took some time to figure out who those players would be. They played four-handed on the bubble for about 3 hours before Weston Pring bubbled in 4th. Pring bubbled after losing a flip with deuces against ace-queen to Larry Quon. That left him with barely 10 big blinds, and those went in shortly after when Pring held pocket nines on a three-deuce-three flop. Tony Ma called him off with more and a pair of jacks, and held for the win.
That finally put them in the money, and it was a pretty short day after that. It was less than an hour after Pring bubbled that the trophy was awarded to Ma. Michael “Berny” Bernstein finished third when he sent his chips across to Ma with king-jack into ace-ten. Ma flopped an ace and rivered trips for the win, and he was heads up with Quon.
The final two decided to cut a deal with Ma holding the overwhelming chip lead. Ma gave up a little cash to allow Quon to pickup his first $10k score while Ma still made $16,620 for the win.
This was Ma’s fourth career win, including a Circuit ring last year at WSOP-C Northern California, Lincoln. The cash will push Ma’s lifetime earnings well over $350k.
| Position | Player | Prize (*Denotes Deal) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Antonio Ma | $16,620* |
| 2 | Larry Quon | $10,000* |
| 3 | Michael Bernstein | $4,160 |
Wasy Wins Event #10: $560 NLH
Eric Wasylenko has made a habit of winning tournaments here on the Pure Poker Tour. He has six PPT trophies to his name, including two Main Event titles, which he won back-to-back in Feb and Apr of 2024. Add to that a slew of final table results where he fell just short of the win, and Wasy may well be the winningest player in PPT history. I haven’t run the numbers, but I’d be very surprised if he wasn’t at, or very near, the top of the list.
Wasy jumped into the side game after busting the High Roller just before the money, then ran his stack up to the win. It took about 14 hours to play, with the final hand coming at almost 5:30 AM.
Wasy dominated the final table with the lead for most of the way early on the FT. He ran into some trouble heads-up against Brian MacNevin and was down almost 4:1 at one point, but battled back to take it down.
MacNevin turned it on with play four-ways, first sending Bash Ramahi out in 4th place when his underpair held against Ramahi’s ace-queen. He followed that up with a domination cooler against Ryan Smith with king-ten into queen-ten to send the Saskatoon native out in 3rd.
That put MacNevin about 2:1 against Wasy to start heads up, and he jumped to a 4:1 lead quickly. Wasy turned that around with two key races. In the first, his pocket nines held in a race against ace-queen to make it 1.1 million to 750k. Then, a few hands later, after Wasy had chipped up a bit more, his ace-ten overs got there against the pocket sevens for MacNevin for the win.
This wasn’t even close to his biggest win, and marked his 21st live win. The prize should put his lifetime earnings within spitting distance of $1.1 million.
| Position | Player | Prize |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Eric Wasylenko | $11,635 |
| 2 | Brian MacNevin | $7,865 |
| 3 | Ryan Smith | $5,130 |
| 4 | Bash Ramahi | $3,420 |
| 5 | Michael Bernstein | $2,255 |
| 6 | Yeping Shan | $1,640 |
| 7 | Shawn Trojan | $1,265 |
| 8 | Jo Teliani | $990 |
Big Weekend Still to Come
The second running of the 2025 PPT is drawing to a close with the final weekend of the series on the horizon. Thursday’s main action is the $450 PLO game with 30k to start and 30-minute blinds. A two-card version of the Deepstack Hyper format that ran with four cards on the opening day of the series is the side event for Thursday.
The final weekend is all about the Main Event, with two Day 1 flights running. Day 1a goes on Friday at noon, with Day 1b on Saturday. Qualifiers from those days will return for the big money on Sunday. Interspersed among the Main Event action is a satellite to Day 1b on Friday night, the Team Event on Saturday night, and the Last Chance game running alongside Day 2 of the Main on Sunday.
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