Raoul Kanme won the Onyx Super High Roller Series $25,500 Main Event at the Merit Royal Diamond in North Cyprus, defeating a 255-entry field for a career-best $1,250,000. The Dutch player got there in part by putting his tournament essentially on the line with a bluff against Matthias Lipp, then beating the same opponent heads-up.
The event's $5 million guarantee was comfortably surpassed, with the final prize pool settling at $6,120,000.
How It Finished
Kanme began the final day as chip leader, then lost a couple of significant pots and found himself in the position that decides most high roller tournaments: holding a stack large enough to matter but small enough to be at risk, against an opponent playing well.
His response was to commit to a bluff that put his tournament at stake. It worked, and it reset the dynamic of the final table.
Heads-up against Lipp, the final hand had Lipp all in with K♥3♥ against Kanme's A♣3♦. The board ran out 8♥7♣5♦J♥4♠ — no help to Lipp — and Kanme took the trophy and the $1,250,000.
That final hand is worth a moment of attention because of how ordinary it is. K-high against A-high, roughly a 30-70 favourite for the ace, resolved without drama. Tournaments that turn on a spectacular bluff on day three are decided by a coin-flip-adjacent all-in at the end. That is the shape of almost every tournament ever played.
The Bluff That Mattered More Than the Win
The hand that decided the tournament was not the last one. It was the bluff.
High roller poker is frequently described as a technical exercise in which players approximate solver output and edges accumulate slowly. That description is only partly accurate. At a final table with 255 entries' worth of money in play and an enormous pay jump structure, ICM pressure distorts everything. Players who would call comfortably in a chip-EV vacuum fold, because the difference between fourth and third is worth more than the chips.
A player willing to exploit that — to run a large bluff precisely when opponents are most incentivised to preserve their equity — is doing something a solver would not do at the same frequency. Solvers assume opponents fold correctly. Humans facing a six-figure pay jump do not.
This is the core of exploitative play at the highest level, and it is why the GTO-versus-exploitative debate never quite resolves. The theoretically correct baseline tells you what is unexploitable. It does not tell you that the player across from you is about to lock up a pay jump. Our how to bluff guide covers the principles, and our ICM primer explains why final table folding frequencies diverge so sharply from chip-EV expectations.
The Economics of a 255-Entry $25,500
A field of 255 entries at $25,500 is a large super high roller by any historical standard, and it says something about where the high stakes tournament economy sits in 2026.
Twenty years ago, a $25,000 buy-in tournament drew a few dozen entries and existed as a curiosity attached to a larger festival. Today a $25,500 event in North Cyprus — not Las Vegas, not Monte Carlo — attracts 255 entries and builds a $6.1 million prize pool.
Several things drove that expansion. Re-entry formats multiplied effective field sizes. Staking and backing markets let players sell action they could not personally fund, dramatically widening the pool of people who can enter. And the arrival of wealthy recreational players from crypto and tech created a demand-side that professionals were happy to service.
The staking point deserves emphasis because it distorts how these results should be read. A player winning $1,250,000 in a super high roller frequently keeps a minority of it. Markups, backers and swaps mean the headline number and the player's actual profit can differ by a wide margin. This is not a criticism — it is how the high roller ecosystem functions — but it is worth remembering when reading a result as a measure of a player's year.
Cyprus as a Poker Destination
The location matters as much as the result. Merit Royal Diamond in North Cyprus has become one of the most active high-stakes venues in the world, hosting the Onyx series alongside WPT and other international festivals.
Cyprus's emergence is a case study in how live poker geography has shifted. The island offers a permissive regulatory environment, resort infrastructure, and a location within reasonable reach of European, Middle Eastern and Central Asian players. That combination has drawn festivals that would previously have gone to Western Europe.
It also sits inside the broader pattern that has defined live poker this year: destination poker is growing while incidental poker is dying. Las Vegas is down to eight Strip poker rooms from more than 30 pre-pandemic, because floor space that generates less than slot machines does not survive a downturn. Meanwhile resort destinations that give players a reason to book a flight are running record festivals.
What Recreational Players Can Take From This
Very little of a $25,500 super high roller translates directly to a $50 online tournament. But two things do.
The first is the ICM insight. Pay jump pressure is not exclusive to super high rollers. It operates at every final table at every buy-in, and most players at low and mid stakes underestimate it substantially. Understanding that opponents tighten near pay jumps — and that this creates spots where aggression is dramatically more profitable than usual — is worth more to a $50 player than almost any preflop chart. Our ICM guide and tournaments guide cover it.
The second is the discipline of the closing hand. Kanme's tournament was decided by A-3 against K-3, a spot where neither player made a decision worth analysing. High-variance moments are unavoidable, and no amount of skill removes them. The correct response is a bankroll that survives losing them, not a strategy that avoids them. Our bankroll management guide covers the arithmetic.
What This Means for Players
Pay jumps create bluffing opportunities. When opponents are folding to preserve equity rather than to make correct chip-EV decisions, aggression becomes underpriced. This is true at every stake.
Read headline scores with staking in mind. A $1,250,000 win in a super high roller is rarely $1,250,000 in a player's pocket. The high roller economy runs on shared action.
Guarantees at destination stops are getting easier to beat. A $5 million guarantee that fills to $6.12 million is a healthy result, but the trend of festivals moving to resort destinations means guarantee risk is a live consideration for organisers — and occasional overlays for players.
Variance does not scale down. A 255-entry field and a 2,550-entry field both end with somebody losing a flip. Build the roll for it.
Kanme's win is the largest of his career and the kind of result that reshapes a player's year. It was set up by a bluff and finished by an ace-high hold — which is, more or less, the entire game in one tournament.