If you want to catch up on poker news from October 5 to 11, 2026, the week is a mix of an online bracelet, three circuit closers, a trophy that paid less than second place, a second ring in Calgary, and a streamed heads-up final. Shannon Shorr won on the US shared-pool WSOP Online. Malta handed out the last rings of its first WSOP Circuit stop. Andre Winkler left Rozvadov with a King's Royal Scepter. Stephen Dauphinais won the Monster Stack at the same Calgary room where he won a ring last October. Alexandra Botez swept a best-of-three on ClubWPT Gold. Last week's September 28–October 4 roundup closed GGPoker's WSOP Online. This week's bracelet is a different player pool.

Shannon Shorr Wins a Fourth Bracelet in the $400 Mystery Bounty

According to PA Gaming Review on October 8, 2026, Shannon "TomGlavine" Shorr won the $400 No-Limit Hold'em Mystery Bounty at the WSOP Online fall series on October 6 and earned his fourth World Series of Poker bracelet. He beat a field of 1,149 entries. The prize pool was $413,640, about 38 percent above the $300,000 guarantee. His base prize was $43,053 and his bounty winnings were $16,564. The published total differs by one dollar: US Poker reported $59,616 and PokerTube reported $59,617. F5 Poker, on October 7, described him as 41, with more than $18.3 million in career tournament earnings and more than $4 million of that from WSOP events.

Heads-up, he faced Mike "KissTheRings" Holtz. Shorr's king-queen trailed pocket fives until a king arrived on the river. The suits were not in the write-ups. He played the finish at home with his wife and three children around the computer. F5 Poker, citing CardPlayer, said he replayed the hand for them with the line "River king, Daddy wins!" On X he wrote, "Pretty cool having these three there for the finish." Holtz collected $34,088 in all, including $2,715 in bounties. Third-place finisher 50_Fifty_50 received $29,198.

If you play mystery bounty, the number on the screen is two piles. Shorr's bracelet payout and his bounty cash are listed separately, and Holtz's $34,088 is not a pure ladder prize either. That is why a one-dollar gap between outlets is worth naming instead of rounding both reports into a single clean total. The king on the river is the part you can replay without the suits: king-queen against pocket fives is behind on the flop and the turn unless a king, a queen, or a straight card has already arrived, and the only card the reports name is the river king.

All four of his bracelets have come online. In October 2023 he won a $2,000 six-max for $89,126, then a $1,000 freezeout for $35,539 eleven days later. That second title ended a 17-year wait; his first recorded WSOP cash was a $2,000 event in 2006. Bracelet number three came in a $500 Mystery Bounty in 2025 for $56,143, exactly two years after the second, so this $400 win is his second bracelet in that format. PA Gaming Review, citing Caesars Entertainment, says the 2026 fall schedule has 33 bracelet events on a shared pool across Nevada, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. Pennsylvania had joined that pool by the 2025 fall series. This year's schedule has eight Mystery Bounty tournaments, up from six in 2025, with combined guarantees of $2.2 million. The $1,000 Mystery Bounty Championship, with a $350,000 guarantee, is scheduled for October 18.

WSOP Circuit Malta Closes with Three Rings on the Final Day

According to Poker.pro on October 6, 2026, the inaugural WSOP Circuit Malta finished its last day on October 5 at Casino Malta and the InterContinental Malta in St. Julian's. TexaPoker ran the floor with the WSOP. The series ran from September 25 through October 5 and awarded 12 rings. The final day produced three of them. France's Gaspard Querillacq won the €300 Colossus for €30,000, Italy's Angelo Vietti won the €400 Superstack for €17,225, and France's Ugo Vladimir Taurines won the one-day €350 Bigstack for €19,200. Each of the 12 ring winners also received a WSOP Paradise package valued at $5,000.

Querillacq started the Colossus final day as chip leader with 718,000 and never gave the lead up. He beat the UK's Wayne Brook heads-up. Brook made €18,944, and France's Romain Lefebvre de Rieux finished third for €13,200. The event used six starting flights. The Hendon Mob listed Querillacq at about $59,000 in live earnings before the series, almost all of it from the French and Belgian local circuit, so €30,000 is his largest live score by a wide margin and his first Circuit ring. A wire-to-wire final day is a different job from a short-stack comeback. With 718,000 already in front, the useful hands are the ones that keep the lead from changing, not the ones that double a tiny stack.

Vietti began the Superstack final day second, behind Hungary's Vilmos Farkas, in a two-day event with 226 entries and a €74,354 prize pool. Belarus's Aliaksandr Fralou was second for €11,210, and Finland's Petteri Laiho was third for €7,515. Vietti's Hendon Mob total going in was $278,975, nearly all of it won on Malta across other series, and this was his first WSOP Circuit ring. Taurines closed the festival in the turbo. The Bigstack drew 263 entries for an €86,527 prize pool. Malta's Jovan Pisani finished second for €12,650, and Belgium's Matthieu Cedric O Van de Zande took third for €8,600. Taurines was listed at about $126,000 in live earnings before Malta, with a previous best cash of $12,947, so €19,200 is a new high and a first ring. Poker.pro's notes place him in Morocco.

The Main Event sits one day outside this window, and it is useful only as the frame for October 5. Italy's Luca Topazio won it on October 4 for €200,000 from 879 entries and a €1,115,451 prize pool. He is not one of the three champions from the final day. The next festival scheduled for the same floor is the Battle of Malta Autumn edition, October 27 through November 4 at Casino Malta. Poker.pro did not publish a guarantee figure for that Main Event in the October 6 story, so this roundup stops at the dates.

Andre Winkler Takes the Royal Scepter While Second Place Takes More Money

According to PokerNews on October 6, 2026, Germany's Andre Winkler won the €2,000 EPC Masters at King's Resort in Rozvadov. It was part of the first King's Million European Championship, and the trophy is one of only ten King's Royal Scepters. He beat 346 entries. The prize pool was €602,040. Because Marco Giordano held the chip lead when heads-up began, the Italian took €118,400 in the deal and Winkler took €99,600. They then played for the trophy. Second place left with more money. The title and the largest check were not the same seat. The September 21–27 roundup covered Viorel Gavrila's inaugural EPC title. The Masters is a different event.

PokerNews marks the first two prizes as a heads-up deal. Winkler started Day 2 among the bigger stacks of 69 returning players and had no trouble reaching the 52 paid places. When 13 remained, the blinds had caught him. He was all in for eight big blinds with king-three against MajikMike's pocket eights and hit a king. He reached the final table in the middle of the pack with 22 big blinds, then stayed out of the way while pay jumps fell in. Four-handed, he hero-called a Pasquale Casella bluff with a low pair. Casella later bluffed off the rest, and Winkler was the one who gained. Tobias Peters went out third to Giordano in what PokerNews called a massive flip. The last two chopped the remaining prize pool and played for the trophy.

Giordano started heads-up about two to one. Winkler doubled to take the lead, won a few more pots, and then called when Giordano shoved king-four into queen-ten. Winkler paired the flop and made a flush on the river. The suits were not reported. After a 12-hour day he told PokerNews, "I feel actually a little bit tired, but really great." He also said an earlier EPM win had been life-changing, that he had told friends he came to win one Royal Scepter, and that he had fired a lot of bullets before this one landed. PokerNews separately reports that his first recorded live win on The Hendon Mob was a WSOP ring in May, and that in July, at the same King's Resort, he won a €590 tournament for more than €420,000 from a field of several thousand. The October 6 story does not say those two results are the same event as the EPM he mentioned, so this article keeps them apart.

He told PokerNews he has only been playing live for about two and a half years, that he played online before 2024, and that he now uses online poker to qualify for live events. He wanted to play about 50 tournaments this year and thinks the number will end nearer 100. On the €300 to €1,000 buy-ins at King's, he said you can have a €1 million prize pool every weekend. The deal is the part worth keeping if you only remember one number. A chip-lead chop can make second place the biggest payday even when the shorter stack wins the last hand and the trophy. Reading a results page as "first place equals the largest prize" would get this final table backwards.

Stephen Dauphinais Wins a Second Ring in the Calgary Monster Stack

According to Poker.pro on October 10, 2026, Stephen Dauphinais won the $400 Monster Stack at Deerfoot Inn & Casino from October 6 to 8 and took his second WSOP Circuit ring. The event was no-limit hold'em. It drew 1,417 entries for a $467,430 prize pool, the largest non-January Monster Stack in Circuit Calgary history. Both larger Monster Stacks were January series, in 2026 and 2025. He earned $65,165. Dale Chalifoux finished second for $43,419, and Brian Fleming was third for $30,146. Dauphinais won his first ring in the TORSE event at the same building almost a year earlier, to the day. Poker.pro lists more than $1.2 million in live earnings, a third-place finish in the 2024 Millionaire Maker for more than $600,000, and the PPT Main Event trophy at the Tournament of Champions later that year.

He bagged an average 335,000 from the Wednesday evening turbo flight, the first time this Monster Stack used three flights instead of two. Seventy-one players returned, and Day 2 lasted nearly 12 hours. He was third in chips at the final table, behind Fleming and Daniel Ee, who finished fifth for $15,247. Chalifoux had already started the climb by sending Chad Riddell out in ninth in a queens-over-jacks cooler. Poker.pro does not say which player held the queens. By the time seven remained, Dauphinais had more than 15 million, with Fleming slightly ahead of Chalifoux and both of those stacks over 10 million.

He then knocked out Tyler Hurman in seventh in what Poker.pro called a nines-over-eights cooler. The report does not assign the nines. Hurman had max-late-registered Day 1c and spun that stack to the final table. Three-handed play among Fleming, Chalifoux, and Dauphinais lasted more than two hours, and the lead moved among all three. Fleming eventually went out with pocket eights, all in and about an 80 percent favorite, until a deuce on the river gave Chalifoux a set. Dauphinais doubled through a race of eights against ace-nine, then made a full house with ace-seven on 7♠ Q♦ 5♠ A♦ A♠ and got 6 million in value on the river. Chalifoux was left short. In the last hand he had suited paint, the money went in, and Dauphinais had pocket aces. A low board missed both hands. The face-card ranks and suits were not published.

The same Thursday night, beside the Monster Stack, the $400 Ladies event drew 104 entries for a $34,320 prize pool. Karyn Gemmill won her first Circuit ring for $9,158. In the final hand, blinds were 20,000/40,000 with a 40,000 big blind ante. She raised the button to 95,000 and tank-called Jo Teliani's shove. Teliani had king-ten. Gemmill had seven-three suited, flopped a three, and held. It was her third live win. As of the October 10 report, Calgary had awarded 12 rings, drawn 6,187 entries, and paid $2,472,911. The Main Event was still in its flights. Flight A had 203 entries and more than $400,000 in prizes. That article does not name a Main Event champion, and this one does not invent one. Poker.pro's forecast that the series would clear $5 million is a projection, not a closed prize pool, so it stays out of the results.

Alexandra Botez Sweeps Poker Champs for $250,000

According to Bonus.com on October 10, 2026, Alexandra Botez won Poker Champs, the heads-up event Doug Polk organized on ClubWPT Gold, and took the $250,000 first prize. The prize pool was $500,000, paid to the top four of eight streamed players. Each player was paired with a coach, and both the matches and the training sessions were broadcast. Botez swept Thomas "sodapoppin" Morris in a best-of-three final without dropping a match. Morris made $125,000, Tyler "Tyler1" Steinkamp made $75,000 for third, and Dennis "PaymoneyWubby" Richardson made $50,000 for fourth. Felix "xQc" Lengyel, Eric "Erobb221" Robbins Jr., Emily Beth "Emiru" Schunk, and Joshua "YourRAGE" Maynard were the unpaid quarterfinals.

The path prizes in the story are the locks along the way, not extra cash stacked on top of the $250,000 in the final table. Botez beat Robbins in the first round, which Bonus.com describes as a $50,000 cash and a seat in the semis. She then beat Richardson. The all-in was on a board of K♦ T♠ 4♥ T♥ 2♦. Botez had K♥3♠. Richardson had Q♥Q♦. King-ten two pair beats queen-ten two pair, since the board is paired tens and the higher side pair plays. That win locked $125,000 and the final. The results table still lists her prize as $250,000, so the earlier locks are the amounts she had already secured before she won the last match, not a second and third check. Steinkamp later beat Richardson in the third-place match for an additional $25,000, which is how his prize reaches the $75,000 in the table.

The first final match was short. Blinds were 600/1,200, and the effective stack was 75 big blinds. Botez opened to 2,400 with J♣8♥. Morris min-clicked to 3,600 with K♠5♠, and she called. The flop came 2♠ T♦ 9♣. She had an open-ended straight draw. He had king-high and overbet 7,800 into a 7,200 pot. She called. The turn was the 7♣, which made her the nuts, a seven-high straight, and left Morris drawing dead. He bet 17,100. She raised to 34,200 and won the match. Bonus.com says she seemed almost remorseful about winning it that way before they sat down for game two.

Game two traded the lead. At 1,200/2,400, Morris opened to 4,800 with K♦4♠. Botez three-bet to 19,200 with T♦T♥, and he called. The flop was 2♠ A♦ A♠. She bet 19,200. Morris, described as noticeably tilted, shoved king-high. She called. No king came, and she was the champion. A pocket pair calling a jam on an ace-ace flop is a bluff-catch, not a value bet: she is ahead of king-high and behind any ace. The report gives you the exact hand he held, which is the only reason the call has a known result instead of a range. Her live tournament earnings are $150,000. The previous high was 187th in the 2024 WSOP Super Main Event for $67,300, when she was still a GGPoker ambassador. Bonus.com calls the $250,000 her largest poker win by some distance.

Across the five stories, the week turns on a fourth online bracelet in the US pool, three closing rings in Malta, a scepter that paid less than second, a second Calgary ring, and a streamed heads-up sweep for $250,000.