February 22-23
Amount of money (in USD) that Ottomar Ladva has won in the month of February.
- 1STOttomar Ladva$1,140,000
- 2NDPunnat Punsri$717,611
- 3RD
Teun Mulder$478,408 - 4TH
Jean Noel Thorel$319,017
(Winnings converted to USD.)
“Heads-up can be super swingy and that’s how it was.”
Ottomar Ladva knew that with the deep structure and highly-skilled field, the final day of the EPT Paris Super High Roller was going to be no sprint to the finish line. It would take a long day to get to heads-up play, and an even longer grind to close it out, but Ladva got it done.
This win comes just three weeks after Ladva secured his first seven-figure score with a win in the Onyx High Roller in Cyprus. It's a red hot start to 2026, and more momentum for Ladva's meteoric rise in tournament stakes.
A total of 24 €100,000 entries went through the window, including players like Bryn Kenney, Daniel Dvoress and Punnat Punsri, who chose to exercise their option to register and join the field on Day 2. Punsri and Ladva would see their way to the end, where the battle would come down to the final three players. The three-hour, three-handed battle moved the chips around drastically, but it was Teun Mulder who busted out in third. Ladva was the primary beneficiary of the hours-long fight, leading to a big lead when play reached heads-up, where he held a 5:1 chip lead.
Punnat Punsri is off to his usual stellar start in 2026 with the runner-up finish. Heads-up fireworks
From there, the fuse was lit and the fireworks began. It was clear that both players were comfortable playing small pots and Punsri’s stack fluctuated in the first couple of hours with the counts drawing near even a multiple times. But the first break of the heads-up battle came, they were right back to Ladva holding a 5:1 chip lead.
The next few hours were a display of how the pendulum can swing wildly in tournament poker as the counts drew closer to each other with Punsri on a mission to mount an impressive comeback win. Then, out of nowhere, Punsri suddenly was the one holding a 5:1 chip lead after being the benefactor of some critical pots, but Ladva was undeterred.
Ladva, who has won two huge high rollers in the course of a month, is dealing with the pressure of rising stakes with ease. “I started out playing super low stakes and now I’m playing the highest stakes possible,” he told us.
That experience continues to build and pay dividends, and soon Ladva would win a crucial pre-flop all-in to double up and even out the stacks yet again. From that point forward, both players held a small chip lead a number of times before Ladva started to widen the gap. In the end, Punsri called it off on the turn with on a board, but Ladva turned over the to win the tournament with a flush.
The EPT stop will continue in Paris all week, where they're wrapping up the last opening flights of the Main Event before a mad sprint to this weekend's final table.
Images courtesy of Manuel Kovsca/Rational Intellectual Holdings, Ltd.
