While most of the 2025 World Series of Poker events are just that, games sponsored and branded directly by WSOP, Event #78: $600 PokerNews Deepstack Championship was a bit different. While still an official WSOP bracelet event, the game carried the extra branding of media partner PokerNews, adding a bit of extra cachet for the official live reporting source for WSOP.
After 4 days of fierce action, local player Nick Ahmadi made his way through the huge 5,667-entry field to take down the top prize of $302,165, a bit more than 10% of the $2,256,168 in total prizes. The win also put the USA on top in the event on American Independence Day, July 4th.
America had a couple of seats at this final table on Independence Day, with Daniel Schill (5th, $84,676) also flying the Stars and Stripes. They hosted a final table that represented much of the rest of the world, with South America, Central America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia all well represented in the final 9.
2025 WSOP Event #78: $600 PokerNews Deepstack Championship Final Table Results
| Place | Player | Prize |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Nick Ahmadi | $302,165 |
| 2 |  Ran Kadur | $201,233 |
| 3 |  Nicolas Godard | $149,601 |
| 4 |  Jorge Dominguez | $112,101 |
| 5 | Daniel Schill | $84,676 |
| 6 |  Jason Li | $64,477 |
| 7 |  Mario Diaz Quilez | $49,497 |
| 8 |  Pablo Valdes | $38,310 |
| 9 |  Aditya Sushant | $29,897 |
2025 WSOP Event #78: $600 PokerNews Deepstack Championship Final Day Recap
Six players returned to the action for the fourth and final day of play in Event #78: $600 PokerNews Deepstack Championship, with Mario Diaz Quilez, Pablo Valdes, and Aditya Sushant all cashing out from the final table late on Day 3. Ahmadi came back to the final day 2nd in chips behind fellow Yank Daniel Schill, with Canada’s Jason Li, who led much of the Day 3 action, in 3rd, but 12 big blinds behind Ahmadi.
The Maple Leaf was the first flag to be lowered from the final table flagpoles on Day 4 after Li found himself in a not-so-classic flip against start-of-day leader Schill. After a big blind-on-blind hand against Jorge Dominguez that saw him shove the small with jack-deuce, only to wake up in domination nation against king-jack and leave him with just 5 bigs, Li was in with king-jack to run into ace-ten for Schill.
It was about 90 minutes before the next player hit the rail, and it was start-of-day leader Schill. He’d run into a flip against Ran Kadur with ace-queen against Kadur’s pocket sevens. Schill flopped the world with an ace and a queen coming in the first three board cards, but “it’s always coming seven” on the turn gave Kadur the set and the win.
That cut Schill’s stack in half, and he ran into another flip spot about an hour later for the rest of his stack. He shoved over a raise to 2.7 million from Ahmadi in the cutoff and he was looking for overs with king-jack against pocket tens for Schill. The pair beat him again when the board missed both players, and the start-of-day leader was out in 5th.
It was another hour before they got down to three left after Dominguez shoved 26 million from the small blind over a 3.7m raise from Ahmadi, but Ahmadi had the goods with pocket kings, well ahead of the ace-jack for Dominguez. Ahmadi turned a set to take a commanding lead, but the K♣ turn gave Dominguez outs to the Royal before the river bricked hard and sent him home.
Five minutes later, it was heads up after Nicolas Godard jammed 37m over an open from Ahmadi, but again ran into pocket kings. Godard was doing even worse against them than Dominguez a few hands earlier, looking for straights or trip queens with king-queen. The flop hit his queen to give him some faint hope, but the rest of the board was empty for him.
After what was a fairly long opening segment of the day, they went from four to a winner in about 30 minutes. About 20 minutes after Godard bowed out, the final hand between Kadur and Ahmadi played out. Kadur was looking up at a big hill coming into HU, playing just 25 million to 145m for the eventual winner.
He chipped that up to just under 50 million, but there was no comeback in the cards for the Israeli. The final hand saw limp-check action preflop before Ahmadi’s jack-deuce flopped trip jacks from the button. Kadur fired 1.6m on the jack-jack-four flop and 2.5m on the five turn, where he paired his kicker with king-five.
Kadur slowed down with a check on the river 9♦ before Ahmadi shoved the covering stack. Kadur hit the tank for a bit but called with his second pair for his remaining stack of about 30m before seeing the bad news.
This was Ahmadi’s biggest score and first bracelet. He came into the game with just over $1 million on his Hendon Mob page so this should have him closing in on $1.4 million in total live earnings.
