Tuesday marked the midway point of the final Pure Poker Tour series of 2025. The final 7 players in the 6-Max came back to decide most of the $39,900 in prizes, while the PLO Bounty game on the side drew 108 entrants for a combined prize pool of $30,780 ($19,980 prizes, $10,800 bounties).
All in all, it was a relatively quick day, with the 6-Max game finishing in less than 6 hours, and the PLO Bounty going a surprisingly short 11 hours. Calgary’s Michael St. Pierre-Porter bagged his fourth PPT trophy in the 6-Max, taking down Mike Malm in a fierce heads-up battle after the final four players cut an ICM-ish deal. All of St. Pierre-Porter’s PPT wins have come this year, with a double-trophy PPT2.
Meanwhile, in the PLO Bounty playing out alongside the 6-Max Day 2, Lynn Norris was quietly working her way to her first-ever win in just her third recorded live cash.
St. Pierre-Porter Bags 4th PPT Diamond of 2025
Michael St. Pierre-Porter may need a bigger trophy cabinet soon, as he’s beginning to amass quite a collection of PPT diamonds. He picked up his fourth version of the newly designed 2025 trophy in tonight’s 6-Max, prevailing over a pretty stacked final table that included runner-up and Alberta Poker Index Player of the Year for 2024, and leader for 2025, Mike Malm, the defending champion Nu Teliani, Tony Ma, who was 5th in this game in September in one of multiple FT appearences and is top-five in this years API standings, Joe Roberts, Nadav Bitton, and Deven Lane, who was 3rd in this game in September.
It’s hard to pick a soft spot in the lineup when one doesn’t really exist, but St. Pierre-Porter was able to hold out for the trophy. This score looks like it will come in 5th on his all-time earnings list and push him over $135k lifetime. He was 15th on the API rankings in the last update, so this may well push him up that list a bit as well.
Lynn Norris Gets First Win in Third Recorded Cash
It was a pretty big night for Lynn Norris as she picked up her first live win in her third recorded live cash. And she had to get through the defending champion, plus three other players from September’s FT in Ryan and Tony Comely, and Tony Ma to do it.
Add in perennial deep-runner Tom T, Kyle Levicki, and a few others, and it wasn’t exactly an easy spot for her. Nonetheless, she made the final table with the chip lead, and despite chipping down through the early part of the FT, she rallied back in a huge hand against 3rd-place finisher Ryane Sanders when she found a straight to survive with a huge double and leave him on fumes.
The fumes dissipated a few hands later after getting a bit of a boost first, sending his dregs to runner-up Kenneth Budd. That put Budd and Norris heads up for the win, with Norris in the lead, but it looked like it could be a long-ish battle as both players were close in the counts.
That wasn’t to be, however, as the first hand of heads-up was ace-queen-eight-eight double-suited for Norris, and king-king-three-deuce rainbow for Budd. The money went in preflop, and five cards later, Norris was looking at the nut hearts and her first live win.
