Klemens Roiter has taken control of the 2026 PokerStars Live League after an EPT Barcelona festival that reshaped all three leaderboards. The Austrian leads the High tier with 6,774.01 points, more than 1,600 clear of second place, and the race for €157,500 in PokerStars LIVE credit has been thrown wide open in the process.
Barcelona always distorts the standings — it is the largest festival on the European calendar and the points on offer are correspondingly enormous. This year the distortion was unusually violent.
Roiter's Barcelona Was Absurd
Roiter arrived in Spain sitting second in the High standings. He left with a lead most players would need half a season to build.
His haul included victories in both a €25,000 event and a €10,000 event, plus a runner-up finish for good measure. Three deep runs at those buy-in levels in a single festival is the kind of week that funds a year, and in leaderboard terms it was decisive.
Enrico Camosci also had a strong festival and climbed to second on 5,092.72 points, helped by a 128th-place finish in the EPT Main Event and third in the €30,000 Super High Roller. Those two results pushed Juan Pardo from first to third — a demotion the Spaniard earned by absence rather than by failure.
Pardo has skipped most of the live summer grind, including the WSOP, with his most recent recorded live results coming at EPT Monte Carlo back in May. He still sits on 5,056.76 points, only 36 behind Camosci. That a player who has essentially not played since spring remains within touching distance of second says a great deal about how front-loaded his season was.
Aleksejs Ponakovs, who also skipped Barcelona, slipped to fourth on 4,642.90. Kayhan Mokri took full advantage, recording three cashes in Barcelona including a runner-up finish in the €100,000 Super High Roller, and climbed into fifth on 4,495.70.
High Leaderboard After Barcelona
| Rank | Player | Country | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Klemens Roiter | Austria | 6,774.01 |
| 2 | Enrico Camosci | Italy | 5,092.72 |
| 3 | Juan Pardo | Spain | 5,056.76 |
| 4 | Aleksejs Ponakovs | Latvia | 4,642.90 |
| 5 | Kayhan Mokri | Norway | 4,495.70 |
| 6 | Andras Nemeth | Hungary | 4,453.33 |
| 7 | Daniel Dvoress | Canada | 4,308.05 |
| 8 | Mehdi Chaoui | Morocco | 4,039.19 |
| 9 | Orpen Kisacikoglu | Turkey | 4,013.21 |
| 10 | Ottomar Ladva | Estonia | 4,008.54 |
The Medium Tier Is a 22-Point Race
The genuinely tense race is one tier down.
Andrew Hulme holds first place in the Medium leaderboard on 3,896.24 points after adding 1,106 during Barcelona. Jason Wheeler sits second on 3,874.13 — a gap of 22.11 points, which in leaderboard terms is nothing at all.
Wheeler's climb came from the biggest score of his career: victory in the PokerStars Open Barcelona Main Event, a 4,333-entry monster that paid him €731,000 ($846,025). Wheeler already owns a WSOP bracelet, and he has said the Barcelona win ranks alongside it — a striking comparison from a player who has been grinding the international circuit for well over a decade.
Manuel Ferrari is third on 3,612.07 after taking down the EPT Barcelona Main Event itself. Ferrari beat a field of 1,823 entries and collected €1,002,488 ($1,170,857) following a three-way deal with Lukas van Eeden and Jose Criado. It was the seventh-largest EPT Main Event field in the tour's 22-year history and it capped a breakout year for the Italian.
Conor O'Driscoll dropped to fourth despite three Barcelona cashes counting toward the Medium tier — a reminder of how much upward pressure the festival generated.
Danilo Donnini went the other way. He entered Barcelona third in the Medium standings and left it 19th.
Medium Leaderboard After Barcelona
| Rank | Player | Country | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Andrew Hulme | England | 3,896.24 |
| 2 | Jason Wheeler | United States | 3,874.13 |
| 3 | Manuel Ferrari | Italy | 3,612.07 |
| 4 | Conor O'Driscoll | Ireland | 3,599.65 |
| 5 | Alexandre Fournier | Canada | 3,531.57 |
Donnini Still Rules the Low Tier
The Low leaderboard was the calmest of the three. Donnini, despite his Medium-tier collapse, holds first on 1,705.71 points. Hulme is second on 1,532.41 and O'Driscoll third on 1,442.23.
Both Hulme and O'Driscoll therefore occupy prize-paying positions in two separate tiers simultaneously — an outcome that reflects a specific strategic choice. Playing a wide buy-in range accumulates points in multiple leaderboards at once, and the Live League's tier boundaries overlap enough to make that viable.
Luca Bernardi and Jamie Flynn complete the Low top five.
What Is Actually at Stake
The Live League awards €157,500 in PokerStars LIVE credit across the three leaderboards, distributed to the top three in each.
- High tier (buy-ins €/$/£4,900+): €50,000 for first, €25,000 for second, €12,500 for third
- Medium tier (€/$/£1,000 to €/$/£5,500): €25,000, €12,500, €6,250
- Low tier (€/$/£1,200 and under): €15,000, €7,500, €3,750
There is also a broader incentive that gets less attention than it deserves. The top 30 players in each tier qualify for a live freeroll with a €100,000 prize pool at the first EPT stop of 2027. That is 90 qualifying spots and a genuine reason for mid-tier grinders to keep firing through the back end of the season.
The Overlapping-Tier Problem
Look closely at the tier boundaries and something odd emerges. The Medium tier covers €1,000 to €5,500. The Low tier covers €1,200 and under. The High tier starts at €4,900.
Those ranges overlap. A €1,100 event counts for both Medium and Low. A €5,000 event counts for both Medium and High. Hulme and O'Driscoll are not exploiting a loophole so much as playing the schedule the structure rewards — a diet of events clustered in the €1,000-€1,200 band scores twice.
Whether that is a design feature or an accident, it produces a real strategic edge for players who plan their festival schedule around it rather than simply entering whatever looks soft.
What This Means for Players
Season-long leaderboards are one of the more underrated forms of value on the live circuit, and most recreational and semi-pro players ignore them entirely. The Live League's Low tier requires no buy-in above €1,200. Donnini leads it on 1,705.71 points — a figure that a disciplined regional grinder playing PokerStars-affiliated festivals could realistically approach.
€15,000 in LIVE credit is a full season of buy-ins for a player at that level. The freeroll adds another shot on top.
The lesson from Hulme's position — second in Medium, second in Low — is that leaderboard equity is a real component of expected value that should influence which events you enter, not just an afterthought once the trophy is gone. Players thinking seriously about their tournament schedule may find our comparison of cash games versus tournaments useful for framing the volume commitment involved, and the bankroll management fundamentals matter double when chasing points rather than pure EV.
There is a trap here too. Chasing a leaderboard can push players into events they have no business entering, and the Live League's High tier is a €4,900-minimum arena where the field quality is brutal. Roiter, Camosci, Pardo, Ponakovs, Dvoress and Kisacikoglu are not a soft group. Point-chasing at that level is a fast route to a ruined year.
The Run-In
The 2026 season is heading into its closing stages, and the standings suggest a genuinely competitive finish in at least two tiers. Roiter's lead in the High leaderboard looks close to insurmountable barring an absence — but Pardo's position proves that points banked in spring survive a summer off, and Roiter now has a target on his back for the remaining stops.
The Medium race between Hulme and Wheeler, separated by 22 points with a full autumn schedule remaining, is the one worth watching.
Players can track all three leaderboards through the PokerStars Live app. For anyone weighing up which rooms best support a live-circuit schedule, our tournament site rankings and UK player guide are good starting points.