Blake Ellinghaus won the WPT bestbet Scramble Championship for $294,900, rivering a straight in the deciding hand to join the WPT Champions Club and record by some distance the biggest result of his poker career. The Illinois native took down the $5,000 buy-in event at bestbet Jacksonville in Northern Florida, beating Jared Reinstein heads-up for his first World Poker Tour title.
The numbers around the win are the interesting part. Ellinghaus arrived with just $140,000 in prior live tournament cashes to his name, and he did not buy in directly — he qualified through a $580 satellite. One qualifying ticket became a score worth more than twice his entire previous career earnings.
How the Final Table Played Out
The tournament drew 294 entries, comfortably clearing its $1 million guarantee. Ellinghaus was a big stack for most of it: second in chips at the end of Day 1a, second again at the close of Day 2, and out in front by the end of Day 3 heading into Wednesday's final table.
That lead did not survive the opening levels. Bryan Paris — one of the most accomplished online tournament professionals the game has produced — went on an early run and took over the chip lead. Reinstein won a significant pot off Ellinghaus in the same stretch. Then Hugh Membrino doubled through the eventual champion after winning a 60/40, leaving Ellinghaus squeezed between two players with momentum.
He never dropped to a genuinely short stack, and the chips came back quickly. Ellinghaus flopped top pair with top kicker against Membrino's top pair and a weaker kicker, sending Membrino out in sixth for $57,000.
Final Table Results
| Place | Player | Prize |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Blake Ellinghaus | $294,900 |
| 2 | Jared Reinstein | $184,000 |
| 3 | Bryan Paris | $135,000 |
| 4 | Skyler Dennis | $100,000 |
| 5 | Michael Macchia | $75,000 |
| 6 | Hugh Membrino | $57,000 |
Reinstein's pocket aces held against Michael Macchia to end his run in fifth for $75,000, a bustout that locked a six-figure payday for every remaining player. Skyler Dennis then doubled through Ellinghaus, and once again Ellinghaus got the chips back, eliminating Dennis in fourth for $100,000.
From there he never lost the lead. Pocket jacks held against Paris's pocket nines to end the online legend's run in third for $135,000, and Ellinghaus carried a 6:1 advantage into heads-up play. Reinstein found one double to get back into contention, but the final hand went the champion's way: Ellinghaus rivered a straight and moved all in, and Reinstein — who had flopped a straight draw and paired the river instead — made the call. Second place paid $184,000.
Jacksonville's Place on the WPT Map
bestbet Jacksonville has quietly become one of the more dependable non-flagship stops on the World Poker Tour calendar. The Scramble is a returning fixture rather than a one-off, and the year-on-year comparison tells you something about the stability of the field: Connor Rash won the same event in November 2025 for $315,530.
A first prize dropping from $315,530 to $294,900 is a small contraction, not a warning sign. Field sizes on regional championships swing by a few dozen entries depending on the calendar around them, and a 294-entry turnout at $5,000 in early September — with Florida competing against a crowded autumn schedule — is a healthy number.
What it confirms is that Jacksonville has an audience. Florida's poker economy is one of the deepest in the country, and a $5,000 championship that reliably attracts close to 300 entries without a Las Vegas postcode is exactly the kind of event the WPT needs in its portfolio.
The State of Mid-Major US Tournament Poker
The health of American tournament poker in 2026 is not measured at the top. It is measured in rooms like this one.
The flagship events take care of themselves — the WPT World Championship, the Main Tour's marquee stops, the summer in Las Vegas. The question that matters for the ecosystem is whether a regional card room in a state without online poker can still put a seven-figure prize pool on the board in a non-peak month. Jacksonville just answered yes.
That matters because mid-major series are where the pipeline actually runs. Ellinghaus is the case study: a player with $140,000 in lifetime cashes who had never won a title of consequence, who found a $580 satellite, and who is now in the WPT Champions Club. That progression does not exist at the $10,000 level. It exists because regional championships sit at a buy-in that a good local player can realistically satellite into.
Set against the Main Tour, a $294,900 score is modest — flagship WPT titles routinely pay multiples of that, and the World Championship operates on an entirely different scale. But the comparison cuts both ways. The variance a player absorbs to chase a Main Tour score is enormous, and the fields are correspondingly tougher. The presence of a player like Bryan Paris at this final table shows the regional circuit is not soft, but it is not the $10K high-roller grind either.
What This Means for Value-Hunting Players
For anyone planning a live tournament schedule, the Ellinghaus result is a useful piece of evidence rather than a lottery ticket.
Satellites remain the single best structural edge in tournament poker. A $580 entry into a $5,000 championship is a roughly 8.6-to-1 leverage ratio before a card is dealt, and satellite fields are consistently weaker than the main event fields they feed. Players who understand satellite-specific strategy — where survival is worth more than chip accumulation, and ICM pressure distorts correct play more than in any other format — have a genuine, repeatable edge. Most of the online rooms serving US players run qualifiers into live series, and sites like BetOnline have long used satellite ladders as a core part of their tournament offering.
Regional championships offer better value per dollar of variance than flagship stops. A $5,000 event with 294 entries has a shallower field of professionals than a $10,000 with 1,000-plus, a shorter time commitment, and a prize structure that still pays life-changing money at the top. For a player with a bankroll that supports occasional $5,000 shots but not a season of them, the mid-major calendar is where the equity is.
Bankroll discipline is what makes any of this repeatable. The temptation after reading a story like this is to fire a direct buy-in and skip the qualifying step. That inverts the entire lesson. Ellinghaus risked $580. Proper bankroll management for live tournaments means treating a $5,000 event as a shot you take from a satellite or from a properly sized roll, not a bet you make because somebody else got there.
It is also worth being honest about what a one-off score means. Ellinghaus played well — he lost the chip lead three separate times and recovered it three separate times, which is not luck — but a single result does not establish a win rate. Players weighing where to commit their time should understand the structural differences between formats before choosing one, and our breakdown of cash games versus tournaments covers why tournament variance demands a fundamentally different bankroll approach.
For now, though, the Champions Club has a new member, and the $580 satellite that got him there is the detail worth remembering.