The third edition of PokerStars’ Spin & Go Championship Live event is fast approaching, as the event is set to play out as part of this year’s European Poker Tour (EPT) Paris festival, on February 23 and 24.

With just a couple of weeks to go until the event kicks off, PokerStars now has the names of the 81 players who will take part in the tournament. Unlike other live poker tournaments, the Spin & Go Championship Live will not be taking any buy-ins, and only players who won their seats through various qualifying paths will get a chance to compete.

The 81 players will be looking to follow in the footsteps of Guilherme Kleist, who won the last Spin & Go Championship Live event in Barcelona back in August last year.

Participant Names and Backgrounds Revealed

The next Spin & Go Championship Live event is fast approaching, and PokerStars has spoken to a number of qualifiers who have reserved their seats in the unique poker extravaganza, looking to reveal their stories to the poker fans around the world.

The player pool for the Championship will include an interesting mix of recreational poker players who won their seats while having some fun online at PokerStars, professional poker players and Spin & Go grinders, and semi-professional players who are still considering making poker into a full-time career.

The Spin & Go Championship Live in Paris will host a very international player field, with players from the USA, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Ukraine, Sweden, and even the Canary Islands all in attendance.

One of the players PokerStars had a chance to talk to was Kevin Joel Berman, a Los Angeles police officer and detective who secured his seat in the event at EPT Malta. Berman won his seat by playing at live SAG tables in Malta and getting lucky in the prize draw.

“I was thrilled at the prospect of going back to Paris to play. I had previously played the EPT in Paris, so I’m looking forward to returning and playing. The fact that I won my seat is amazing, to say the least,” said Berman, who was visibly thrilled at the idea of playing in the Spin & Go Championship Live at no cost.

A very unique entry in the event comes from Leoncio Bello, a 66-year-old from the Canary Islands, who won his seat playing a $3 SAG qualifier.

A recreational player who enjoys playing SAGs on PokerStars in his spare time, Bello will now be traveling to Paris for the Spin & Go Championship Live with his son Alex, and the two will be looking to create a mini-documentary, hopefully recording his path to victory.

A Mexican poker professional by the name of Gustavo Laldiva Enriquez will also be looking to make history at the Championship, as he enters his second Spin & Go Championship Live, following an early elimination in Barcelona.

Enriquez commented, “After being eliminated very early in Barcelona, I was left with the feeling that I could do better, which motivated me to put in a lot of volume during the qualification period to secure a place in the next event.”

The three will be joined by Markus Gerdolf, a sales manager in the food industry from Sweden, William Underwood, an English professional poker player, Roman Zhesnovskyi, an economics student from Ukraine, and dozens of other hopefuls who secured their seats.

They will all be competing for their share of a €300,000 prize pool, €150,000 of which will be reserved for the three players who make the final table.

EPT Paris Is Almost Here

The 2026 EPT Paris festival starts on February 18, and there is only a week left before the chips are in the air in some of the preliminary events.

The festival will kick off with a €1,650 PokerStars Open Main Event, an excellent prelude to the €5,300 EPT Main Event, which starts on February 23.

The Spin & Go Championship Live will be one of the many side events to play alongside the highlight tournaments, including a variety of mystery bounty tournaments, high-rollers, and qualifiers for all the major events of the series.

The eyes of the European poker community will be on Paris over the final days of February, as new EPT and Spin & Go Championship Live champions are named in the span of just a few days.