Joshua Mischel has claimed the largest preliminary-event title at the Maryland State Poker Championship, topping 728 entries in the $600 No-Limit Hold'em to bank $63,400 — the second-biggest cash of his career and a well-timed one, arriving just as the festival's $500,000 guaranteed Main Event began.
The championship, running at Live! Casino & Hotel Maryland at Arundel Mills from August 26 through September 7, has crowned eight winners across its preliminary schedule and carries more than $1 million in total guarantees across 16 trophy events.
Mischel's Breakthrough
The $600 NLHE ran six starting flights and pulled 728 entries — comfortably the largest field of the preliminary schedule and a number that would look respectable at a considerably larger festival.
Mischel beat fellow Marylander Alvin Anton heads-up. Anton's runner-up finish made it back-to-back final tables in the event after a fourth-place result in 2025, which is the kind of consistency that goes unrewarded far more often than it should.
For Mischel, the win is the second-largest score of a career whose previous high point was a runner-up finish in the WSOP Circuit Baltimore Main Event last October. He also finished eighth in this festival's Main Event last year for $14,000, so the Arundel Mills room has been good to him.
"If I told you how hot I ran in this tournament you wouldn't believe me," Mischel posted alongside a photograph of his trophy — a refreshingly honest assessment from a winner, and one most players who have taken down a 728-entry field would recognise as accurate.
The Full Preliminary Results
The schedule leaned unusually heavily into mixed and non-hold'em variants, which produced a set of winners rather different from a typical regional festival.
| Event | Field | Winner | Payout |
|---|---|---|---|
| #1: $400 H.O.R.S.E. | 89 | Cameron Tahmasebi | $6,550 |
| #2: $600 NLHE | 728 | Joshua Mischel | $63,400 |
| #3: $400 Mixed Omaha | 66 | Filippos Stavrakis | $6,431 |
| #4: $400 5-Card PLO | 51 | Ellis Wong | $5,890 |
| #5: $400 R.O.S.E. | 54 | Eric Lucas | $4,665 |
| #6: $400 Freezeout | 66 | Eric Davies | $3,632* |
| #7: $400 Six-Max | 159 | Brian Fuchs | $13,050 |
| #8: $200 NLHE Turbo | 55 | Scott Sommer | $3,600 |
*denotes a deal
Filippos Stavrakis added an Omaha title to a résumé that already included a WSOP bracelet from the $1,000 PLO in 2018 — a nice piece of symmetry for a player who clearly knows his way around four cards. Brian Fuchs secured the second-largest cash of his career in the $400 Six-Max for $13,050.
The contrast between the $600 NLHE field of 728 and the mixed-game fields of 51 to 89 is stark, and it is the story of regional American poker in miniature. Hold'em draws twelve times the crowd. Mixed games survive on the enthusiasm of a dedicated minority who are, correspondingly, quite good at them.
That has a practical implication worth stating plainly: a $400 H.O.R.S.E. event with 89 entries has a far tougher field per dollar than a $600 hold'em event with 728. Recreational players drawn by the small field size should understand what they are walking into. Our guides to Omaha and mixed-game fundamentals are a reasonable starting point, but a weekend's reading does not close the gap on players who have spent years in these formats.
The Main Event
The $1,700 Main Event carries a $500,000 guarantee and ran three starting flights on September 3, 4 and 5, with Day 2 on September 6. It is sponsored by PokerStars Exclusively on FanDuel, the operator's US-facing brand, and the winner receives an all-expenses-paid player's choice EPT Main Event package alongside the cash.
That package is a genuinely valuable addition. An EPT Main Event seat runs €5,300 before travel and accommodation, and a "player's choice" version lets the winner pick a destination — Barcelona, Monte Carlo, Prague, Paris, whichever stop suits. For a regional champion who may never have played a European festival, it is the sort of prize that changes a poker year.
Three starting flights at $1,700 into a $500,000 guarantee means the tournament needs roughly 330 entries to cover. Given the $600 event drew 728, the guarantee looks safe.
The remaining schedule includes a $300 Women's No-Limit Hold'em with $10,000 guaranteed, a $400 Big O with $15,000, the $1,100 Live! Stacks Championship with $40,000, a $200 QuadStacks Bounty, and a $400 Deepstack Closer with $40,000 guaranteed on September 7.
PokerStars, FanDuel and the Live Sponsorship Play
The sponsorship deserves a moment's attention. PokerStars Exclusively on FanDuel is the rebranded US online product operating across New Jersey, Michigan and Pennsylvania, and it has spent 2026 aggressively attaching its name to live regional events.
Maryland is not one of the three states where the online product operates. Maryland has legal sports betting and a substantial live casino industry, but no regulated online poker. Sponsoring the state's flagship poker festival is therefore a brand play aimed at a market that does not yet exist — planting a flag in a state where iGaming legislation keeps surfacing without passing.
That is a long game, and it tells you something about how operators are reading the American map. Nine states have legalised online poker; only six have live licensed rooms. The gap between legal and operational is where the industry's growth is currently trapped, and Maryland sits squarely in the group of states that could move.
Players in states without regulated online options often turn to offshore rooms in the meantime. Our reviews of BetOnline, Americas Cardroom and Black Chip Poker cover the main alternatives, and the safe poker sites guide explains what to check before depositing anywhere.
What This Means for Players
Regional championships like this one are among the best value on the American live calendar, and they are consistently underrated by players who fixate on the WSOP and WPT.
Consider the arithmetic. Mischel turned $600 into $63,400 against 728 entries — a field large enough to produce a life-changing score but small enough to navigate in two days. The equivalent field size at a WSOP event would carry a considerably tougher average opponent, because national festivals concentrate professional players in a way that regional ones do not.
The mixed-game caveat above applies in reverse here too. A 728-entry $600 hold'em event at a state championship contains a great many players whose poker education came from television and a home game. That is not a criticism; it is a description of the field, and it is precisely why these events are worth playing.
For anyone weighing a trip, the practical points are straightforward. Multi-flight structures let you fire more than once. Deepstack closers on the final day tend to draw the softest fields of the festival, as serious players have already left. And the bankroll management rule for live festivals is stricter than online: travel, accommodation and food are real costs that need to be in the calculation before you decide how many bullets you can fire.
The Maryland State Poker Championship concludes September 7. For players who prefer to grind from home, our tournament room rankings and US player guide cover the online alternatives.