Florida Man Wins Two High-Stakes Poker Tournaments

There’s another double winner at the 2026 PokerGO Cup as Florida’s Filipp Khavin took down Event #8: $10,000 NLH for $210,000 and his second series title.

Last week, Khavin won the second event of the series for $124,525 after a heads-up chop with Jesse Lonis. He won his second trophy outright as he defeated heads-up opponent Ben Grise, who couldn’t overcome Khavin’s overwhelming chip lead.

Khavin had been awake for 20 hours for Event #2 after flying in from Florida, but he told PokerNews he had “definitely more sleep” ahead of his latest victory.

“This is obviously a bigger prize pool, so it was even more fun,” Khavin said in a winner’s interview.

The event, which was the second-to-last $10,000 offering of the series, drew 70 runners for a prize pool of $700,000. The final table also included Daily King and slowroller Jeremy Becker, top pro and poker coach Andrew Lichtenberger, young breakout pro Nicholas Seward, and Day 1 chip leader Darren Elias, who made three straight final tables in the PokerGO Studio.

Event #8 Final Table Results

Day 2 Action

The WPT end-boss was the start-of-day chip leader at his third straight final table of the series, but the longtime pro couldn’t get anything on Day 2. His opponents always seemed to have it, and his raises and three-bets were repeatedly met with re-raises, and he was eliminated not long after Becker fell in sixth place.

Becker immediately hopped into Event #9 and quickly served up a slowroll with aces to Riordan, who happened to have the second-best starting hand in Texas Hold’em.

Meanwhile, pace at the Event #7 final table slowed significantly before the fourth-place elimination of young pro Nicholas Seward.

Khavin pulled ahead during three-handed play and eliminated “LuckyChewy,” who couldn’t live up to his nickname as he lost with king-jack to the king-four of Khavin.

There would be no chop discussions as Khavin entered heads-up play with a dominant chip lead.

“The stacks weren’t even at any point this time, so we just played it out,” Khavin said.

Grise, a poker player from Indiana, managed to double up once before getting in with good shape with pockets threes against the ace-three of Khavin, who made a runner-runner flush to secure his second victory of the series.

The victory put Khavin just ahead of Brock Wilson on the series leaderboard with 443 points. Wilson has 430 points after two wins earlier in the series.

There’s still one more event on the PokerGO Cup schedule with the $15,000 finale that kicks off on Saturday, March 14, which is the same day that Event #9 will finish out.

_{*Photos courtesy of PokerGO and Antonio Abrego}

Connor Richards is a Senior Editor U.S. for PokerNews and host of the Life Outside Poker podcast. Connor has been nominated for three Global Poker Awards for his writing.