PokerStars ambassador Jason Koon said last year, "It's inevitable that [Stephen Chidwick] is going to be number one" on the all-time money list. He added, "I think he'll be number one by a wide margin because he plays a ton of volume, and he loves it.”
Is 2026 the year his prediction comes true?
Chidwick – currently number two on the list – has another chance to narrow the gap at the top to Bryn Kenney on Sunday. He made the final eight of the €100K High Roller for One Drop at EPT Monte Carlo, with €2,055,000 waiting for the winner.
Kenney is there too, though – with the shortest of the eight remaining stacks, but with 10 big blinds and the ability to pull off an upset when action restarts.
Biggest €100K field for PokerStars
Late registration closed at the start of Day 2 on Saturday, and by then, 13 more players had entered to complete the biggest field ever for a €100K buy-in at a PokerStars live event.
The 76 entries created a massive prizepool of €7,296,000, with €228K going to the One Drop Foundation. €3,000 of every buy-in went to the charity created by Guy Laliberté.
Mikalai Vaskaboinikau donated the most, with six buy-ins, and he was eliminated in 31st place well before the money. 11 players were set to receive at least €182,400.
Day 1 chip leader Daniel Dvoress also crashed out before the money in 16th. Teun Mulder had taken over at the top, with Chidwick in second. Kenney was back in eighth, with Adrian Mateos and Mikita Badziakouski bringing up the rear.
Bubble bursts on Badziakouski
With 13 players left, play slowed, and it took an hour before we lost another player – Mateos. That moved us onto the stone bubble, where, after another hour of play, Badziakouski became the last player to leave with no money.
By the end of the day, just eight players were left, and both Chidwick and Kenney were still in the hunt for the €2,055,000 first prize. Chidwick sits in fourth, with Kenney starting Day 3 as the shortest stack at the table.
The difference between the two players on the all-time money list is almost $4 million. A win for Chidwick and an eighth-place finish for Kenney would nearly halve the deficit.
It sets a fascinating narrative, but six other players will be looking to write their own, with Wiktor Malinowski holding the chip lead, followed by Artsiom Lasouski and Albert Daher.
You can watch the final table of the €100K One Drop on the PokerStars YouTube channel, with all livestreams now featuring dynamic breaks. That means a later start but the ability to have wall-to-wall action, with the livestream skipping through breaks.
Action starts at 12:30pm local time with the live stream starting two-and-a-half hours later.
After the €100K One Drop, you can watch both days of the €250K Super High Roller on Monday and Tuesday, with a High Rollers Cash Game on Tuesday, before the cameras turn to the EPT Monte Carlo Main Event. Day 3 plays out on Thursday with a champion set to be crowned on Sunday.
€100K High Roller for One Drop chip counts
- Wiktor Malinowski (Poland) – 4,360,000
- Artsiom Lasouski (Belarus) – 3,310,000
- Albert Daher (Lebanon) – 3,210,000
- Stephen Chidwick (UK) – 2,725,000
- Leonardo Drago (Italy) – 2,640,000
- Enrico Camosci (Italy) – 1,130,000
- Teun Mulder (Netherlands) – 935,000
- Bryn Kenney (USA) – 690,000
Images courtesy of Rational Intellectual Holdings Limited/Danny Maxwell.
