Park Dominates Main Event Flight B so Far; Gerrits has New Contenders on His Heels

Day 5 of the 2026 Gods of Poker Manila live poker festival has concluded and coincidentally, that is also the number of trophies Martijn Gerrits has claimed so far at the five star City of Dreams Manila Luxury Hotel Resort & Casino in his bid to win a third Player of the Series title. However, new contenders have emerged to give the Dutchman a run for his money.

Furthermore, the second flight of the PHP 30 Million guaranteed Main Event has wrapped up Day 1 with an additional 34 entries to boost the overall tally to 82 entries, which is still well short of the large guarantee for the PHP 82,500 buy-in. However, three entire flights and the late reg prior to the start of Day 2 for Flight B remain to certainly attract overlay hunters from near and far in the capital of the Philippines.

Seunghee Park runs rampage in Flight B so far

There were five scheduled levels of play on Day 1 with four of them lasting two hours each and after nine hours of play, South Korea's Seunghee Lee turned his starting stack of 120,000 into a staggering 757,500. Based on the seven survivors from Flight A, this would already be the third-largest tally but he still has to turn this excellent start into a bag en route to reaching the top 13.5% of the respective field.

Lee tormented the tables especially during the late stages and won a very healthy three-way pot against Ville Pohjalainen and Doyoung Lee with a turned full house against a rivered ace-high flush, putting a dagger into Pohjalainen's stack who made it through with 253,500 in the end. Lee escaped much cheaper during that hand but sent over his stack in a preflop flip to with ace-queen against pocket tens to Park later on.

Fellow Finnish Petteri Miettinen (424,500) and South Korean Eunseok Choi (393,000) round out the podium spots while recent trophy winner Shenglai Zhang (388,000) and Pandora's Mystery Bounty runner-up Lukasz Jankowski (369,000) all have a decent shot at reaching Day 2 in the flagship tournament via Flight B.

Flight B End-of-Day 1 Top 10 Chip Counts:

Lukasz Jankowski

Well-known local poker pro John Tech (95,000) and Ronald Haverkamp (85,000) were also among the 15 survivors and will return to their seats at 12.30 p.m. local time on August 26, 2026. That's when the late registration closes for this flight with recommencing blinds of 2,000-4,000 / 4,000 to give all late entrants 30 big blinds.

The level duration for Day 2 of Flight B will be 60 minutes each throughout and they play down to the money. Flight C follows as of 2 p.m. local time with two 120-minute levels of late registration followed by 35-minute levels until the bubble has been burst whereas the remaining final two flights take place on Thursday, August 27, 2026.

The Overall Leaderboard Ranking is Heating Up

Pandora's Mystery Bounty champion Alvir Inocentes has jumped into second place of the ongoing Player of the Series (POS) leaderboard, trailing only the aforementioned Gerrits. The Dutch player has nine cashes to his name including five trophies in small field mixed games whereas Inocentes reached another two final tables in No-Limit Hold'em.

In a field of 30 entries in Event #30 NLHE with a buy-in of PHP 22,000, narrowly missed the money outside of the top five but he already had a third cash to his name to qualify for the leaderboard. Opening Event winner Bonifacio Mondalo finished runner-up to Ryan Tan and slammed his cards on the felt when he jammed the 8 ♣️ 5 ♠️ 5 ♥️ 6 ♥️ turn as the short stack with the A ♣️ 8 ♦️ .

The loud "PUTANG INA!" followed when Tan showed his 8 ♠️ 6 ♣️ for better two pair, which held on the 2 ♣️ river.

Final Table Result Event #30:

Ryan Tan

Todd Hansen was the first trophy winner of the day in Event #38 Omaha Dealer's Choice before Indonesia's Steven took down the Titan Stack Turbo. Hansen added a second trophy of the day at the end of the night in 6-Card PL Omaha - Hyper Turbo, joined in the winner's circle by Alexander Firsov, Thanh Cao Nguyen and David Wang.

Steven - Titan Turbo Winner

The overall leaderboard has been updated to showcase the new tally with Gerrits still on top after certainly putting in the volume day in and day out. Eleven players have now earned the required three cashes to qualify for the leaderboard prizes to the top three points earners but only Gerrits and Hansen have multiple victories to their name so far.

Current Top Five Leaderboard:

You can check out the current standings of the leaderboard right here.

The Schedule for Day 6

Besides the already mentioned two flights of the PHP 30 Million Guaranteed Main Event, several other side events await. The rose gauntlet will be awarded to the winner of the Titan Stack High Roller and Demigods Challenge winner Fendy Kosasih leads the way followed by Ryan Hong. There are 5 players left out of 29 entries to compete for PHP 6,960,000 in prize money.

The PHP 26,400 Medusa's Head Hunter, an PHP 165,000 Single Day High Roller, and several Omaha Side Events are all listed as well with all details to be found on the GOP Manila 2026 festival schedule page.