Top Amazing Live Poker Moments in 2025

Leo Margets Made History on WSOP

When a woman reaches the final table of almost any poker tournament, excluding maybe only Ladies Events, it’s always breaking news. But the amount of attention a female player gets in these cases often has more to do with how significant the tournament is. And in 2025, no other woman was so widely and positively discussed as Leo Margets. Not even Kristen Foxen.

Why so? The Spanish poker pro and Winamax ambassador reached not just any final table but the one of the WSOP $10K Main Event.

• The first woman in the last 30 years since Barbara Enright.
• The first woman in the Main Event with such a large live field — 9,735 entries.
• The first woman from Spain who ran so deep in this Main.

Everyone discussed Leo’s run. A lot of players supported and cheered for her. A lot of female players hoped that she would win and start the poker boom for women.

Even her opponents at the final table were on her side so much that when she was busted out no one seemed happy but everyone rushed to hug her and congratulate her on these amazing results: 7th place and a $1,500,000 prize.

Well, maybe Leo didn’t win the WSOP Main Event but she truly won a lot of hearts in the poker community by her determined attempt to become a WSOP champion.

Sun Run of Michael Mizrachi

At the start of the World Series of Poker, God asked Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi: “How many significant events do you want to win this time?”, and the answer was: “Yes”. That’s exactly how Michael became maybe the most inspiring player of 2025.

Firstly, for the fourth time, he won the $50K Poker Players Championship, Daniel Negreanu’s the favorite WSOP event.

Michael took his seventh WSOP bracelet and $1,331,332 there but then jumped into the $10K Main Event and after days of exhausting play won it too, winning another $10,000,000.

The poker community reacted so WOW-ly that the Poker Hall of Fame commission decided to reward Mizrachi with unprecedented honor: induction into the hall out of procedure alongside traditionally chosen Nick Schulman.

All this success made Michael “the most desirable bachelor” to be invited into poker rooms’ teams, but the winner could be only one, so he became an ambassador for GGPoker. 

Women Won Titles of Triton and Triton ONE Series

During 2025, Triton Poker solidified its reputation as one of the most respected brands and a series that players may not want to play (because of numbers of great pros there) but want to visit, for sure. And its appeal became even bigger after two female players showed the world that anyone can win a series title, no matter their gender.

Firstly, well-known poker pro Xuan Liu became the winner of the $25K WPT Global Slam at Triton Montenegro in May. She wasn’t planning to win. She wasn’t even planning to play any events except this one because at that time she was a WPT Global ambassador. But she did it, outplaying Daniel Dvoress at heads-up, which she initially started with only 16 BB against 60 BB monster stack of the opponent.

This victory gave her a prize of $860,000 and the status of the first ever woman in poker history to win a Triton title.

Three months later another female poker player Yoko Sasaki joined Xuan by winning $2K One Night NLH on Triton ONE, the baby series of the brand.

While her winnings were much smaller, only $69,000, the result was actually bigger because Yoko simultaneously became the first ever:

• Female winner of the Trion ONE event
• Person from Japan to win any Triton title

Monarch Duels with Top-Notch Poker Players

Multimillion head-ups rarely catches the poker community’s attention, mostly because they’re often hidden from view behind private game hosts.

In August 2025, Finnish poker player and businessman Ossi “Monarch” Ketola decided to change this by starting a live broadcast Monarch Duel featuring him and players ready to spend exorbitant sums of money playing heads-up.

Among his opponents in the first games, hosted by Onyx Club on Cyprus, were high roller Kayhan Mokri (won $2M from Ketola) and poker star Dan Cates (won $15M).

In September, Ossi went to Triton Series in Jeju where he played heads-up again not only against Mokri but also:

• Wiktor Malinowski
• Alex Foxen
• Elias Talvitie
• Bjorn Li

Some matches he lost, others he won, breaking records for the biggest cash spots in live poker and the history of poker along this way. But at the end the only significant record of his cumulative losses stand, minus $20,092,250 after 41.70 hours playing cash high stakes duels.

Some viewers saw these heads-ups as a creative way to promote Ossi’s casino while others decided that all these high rollers simply had nowhere to put their money, so they entered these duels just for fun or to boost their ego.

Anyway, while for some participants throwing money around Ketola could be not quite the brightest moment of the year, it was entertaining enough to make these games one of the most positive moments of 2025 at least from the viewers’ perspective.