Five days of action in the $5,300 North American Poker Tour (NAPT) Main Event have seen a 738-strong field whittled down to just six, with five Americans and a Belgian chasing the $653,050 up top. The total prizepool for the event clocks in at $3,579,300.
And with the final day playing out on Wednesday, November 12 it’s the aforementioned Belgian, Thomas Boivin, who is looking like the man to beat. With a huge stack of over 12.5M chips, good for 125 big blinds, Boivin has over half the chips in play.
With 3M chips, PokerStars ambassador and PokerOrg Player Advisory Board member Jen Shahade sits in second but with a fraction of Boivin’s mighty stack. That she’s still in the hunt at all is chiefly thanks to a runner-runner flush that came along at just the right time against Turkey’s Abdullah Akbarpoor (see below), before seeing a couple of pocket pairs hold up in crucial hands to propel her close to the top of the chipcounts — albeit far below the event’s runaway chipleader.
All six remaining players are now guaranteed a minimum cash of $132,850, guaranteeing a new career-best score for Shahade, whose previous highest cash of €100,000 came in 2014 in an Open-Face Chinese event in Prague.
Day 5 saw 16 players reduced to six and came to a close with blinds at 50K/100K with a 100K big blind ante.
Here’s a quick rundown of who’s left in the chase for the 2025 NAPT title.
Boivin dominates final six
Thomas Boivin — 12,545,000 (125bb)
The Malta-based Belgian sits atop the overnight chip counts, as well as at the head of his home country’s all-time money list.
Victory for Boivin would put a bow on an already highly impressive year for the pro, who won a career-high $2,057,430 in June for third place in the WSOP $250K Super High Roller. And did we mention that came just 4 days after another 3rd place finish in the WSOP $100K High Roller?
Boivin appears to have carried his hot form into the NAPT, where he finished second in the $50K High Roller just last week to add another $334,700 to recorded career earnings of over $13 million. One to watch, and one to watch out for.
Jen Shahade — 3,015,000 (30bb)
Shahade is known for wearing many hats: an author, podcast host, PokerStars ambassador, a member of our PAB and a notable high-level chess player.
A winner at the PokerStars Summer Women’s Festival in August, Shahade has already locked up a new career-best tournament score with her run to the NAPT Main Event final table but will be focused on going all the way for the $600K+ top prize, which would more than double her poker tournament career earnings to date.
Shahade’s podcast, The Grid, is famous for spending each episode focused on one particular hole card combo, and earlier this year featured Canada’s Xuan Liu for a discussion on the finer points of king-seven suited.
After yesterday, Shahade may have some extra detail to add…
Ekrem Bozkurt — 2,570,000 (26bb)
California’s Bozkurt has recorded tournament results going back a decade, and the addition of the prize money won at the NAPT will push his overall earnings over the $1M mark.
He’s racked up plenty of tournament wins across Las Vegas, including here at Resorts World, where a couple of payjumps sit between him and new career-best payout. His current top score of $215,170 came in 2018 at the WinStar River Poker Series in Thackerville, Oklahoma.
Bozkurt had a good day 5, in which he eliminated two of the first four players out, with pocket aces holding up each time. 26 big blinds isn’t a mountain by any means, but it puts him third at this highly unbalanced final table.
Gal Yifrach — 2,280,000 (23bb)
LA-based Yifrach may not have the stack of Boivin, but he does have one thing the Belgian doesn’t: a WSOP bracelet.
In 2018 Yifrach took down the $3K NLH event for $461,798 and the title, and went on a deep run in the $50K WSOP High Roller in 2021, finishing third behind Justin Bonomo and Michael Addamo for a career-high $495,305.
With years of pro experience behind him, Yifrach is unlikely to be distracted by the money or the competition, and while he sits in the lower half of the chip counts heading into the final day he holds a decent stack advantage over the two players below him.
Michael Berk — 985,000 (10bb)
Indiana’s Michael Berk will be looking to end 2025 as he started it — with a win.
Berk took down a $5K event at the Lucky Hearts Poker Open in January, adding $175,350 to career earnings of more than $2.3 million. His biggest score to date came in the 2023 WSOP Main Event, where a top 50 finish paid him $229K.
Berk’s up-and-down Day 5 saw him involved in plenty of pots, including the elimination of Richard Green in 8th when Berk’s 
outflopped Green’s 
. A 3-bet pot with Boivin towards the end of the day, when Berk’s pocket jacks failed to beat Boivin’s flopped trip queens, cost him a big chunk of his stack, and he’ll be looking to make some moves sooner rather than later when the action picks up on Wednesday.
Peter Mugar — 715,000 (7bb)
Mugar has played in the NAPT Las Vegas series each year since it returned in 2023, but has yet to score a six-figure payout here… until now.
The man from Boston has at least $132,850 secured, and despite over a million dollars in tournament earnings is still seeking that first elusive recorded tourney win. Chip leader when the action was 9-handed, Mugar has since slipped perilously close to the exit and will be looking for an opportunity to spin up his short stack when play resumes at 12:30pm local time.
$5,300 NAPT Main Event — final table payouts
| Place | Prize |
|---|---|
| 1 | $653,050 |
| 2 | $408,550 |
| 3 | $291,800 |
| 4 | $224,450 |
| 5 | $172,650 |
| 6 | $132,850 |
Images courtesy of Rachel Kay Winter/Spenser Sembrat/Rational Intellectual Holdings Ltd. Historic tournament information courtesy of The Hendon Mob.
