Eric Blair Wins A Second Title At 2025 PokerGO Cup

Eric Blair has been around the live tournament poker scene for nearly two decades, with 325 career cashes totaling more than $3.4 million accrued along the way. More than 17 years after recording his first cash, the longtime grinder has managed to string together his two largest scores ever in the span of a few days at the 2025 PokerGO Cup.

Blair first took down event no. 4, a $10,000 buy-in tournament, for a new personal best of $254,800. That record was short lived, though, as Blair came out on top of a field of 87 entries in event no. 6, which was the first of two $15,000 buy-in events at this festival. This second victory, which came just three days after his first, included an even larger top prize of $352,350.

These two wins have propelled Blair up the rankings in both the Card Player Player of the Year and the PokerGO Tour standings. The 576 POY points that accompanied the second trophy brought Blair’s POY point total to 1,380, which is currently good for 13th place in the 2025 POY standings presented by Global Poker. Blair also grew his PGT point total to 691, sufficient to place him second on that high-stakes-centric leaderboard.

The strong turnout to the PokerGO Studio for this event resulted in a prize pool of $1,305,000, with the top 13 finishers making the money. Notables like Alex Foxen (12th), Ren Lin (11th), Cary Katz (10th), and Matthew Wantman (7th) ran deep but fell short of moving on to day 2.

The final day began with six players remaining and Christian Roberts out in front. Six-time bracelet winner Nick Schulman took a hit early on when his pocket aces were outrun by the pocket eights of two-time bracelet winner Keith Lehr. Both players ended up hitting sets, but Lehr made a flush on the river to earn the double up, leaving Schulman as the short stack.

.@NickSchulman's aces get smacked early in today's final table.

Watch the action on PokerGO. https://t.co/rDEob36s0E pic.twitter.com/VZy0AfCSHZ

— PokerGO (@PokerGO) February 18, 2025

Schulman managed to win a preflop race to double up soon after to get himself some breathing room, but was ultimately the first to be eliminated. His A-K was unable to best the pocket fours of Michael Berk in a preflop race situation, with the eighth-high runout improving neither player. Schulman earned $65,250 as the sixth-place finisher. He is now approaching $22.6 million in career cashes after this latest deep run.

Matthew McEwan took a stand with K5, three-bet shoving around 11 big blinds over the top of Berk’s small-blind raise. Berk quickly called with AQ, flopped aces up, and held from there. McEwan walked away with $91,350. This was the fourth-largest payday yet for the San Francisco resident.

Roberts began the day as the chip leader, but had slipped to the bottom of the counts as the day wore on. He got the last of his stack in with A8 after a flop of K108, having committed most of his chips preflop. Keith Lehr put him at risk with A7 for the nut flush draw. The 6 turn kept Roberts ahead, but the 6 on the end filled Lehr’s flush to earn him the knockout. Roberts settled for $117,450 as the fourth-place finisher. Like McEwan, this was the fourth biggest score on Roberts’ résumé.

The next big clash featured a couple of pocket pairs. Blair raised to 275,000 on the button with QQ and Berk three-bet shoved for 3,175,000 with 66. Blair snap called and held through a king-high runout to send Berk to the rail in third place ($163,125). This payday increased his career haul to nearly $1.8 million.

Heads-up play began with Blair holding 8,750,000 to the 2,125,000 of Lehr. The final hand arrived fairly quickly. Lehr raised to 300,000 on the button with AK and Blair defended his big blind with Q3. The flop came down 553 and Blair checked-shoved over Lehr’s 250,000 continuation bet. Lair made the call for 1,825,000 and the turn brought the Q. Lehr was in need of an ace, king, or queen on the river. Instead, the 7 rolled off to see him eliminated in second place ($228,375). His career earnings grew to $5.4 million thanks to this runner-up performance.

Eric "Big Vegas" Blair (Blizair1</a>) captures his second title of the 2025 PokerGO Cup! He's now ever so close to <a href="https://twitter.com/JoeyWeissman?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">JoeyWeissman atop the series leaderboard.

Miss the final table? Watch the replay on PokerGO. https://t.co/rDEob36ZQc pic.twitter.com/YNygdBRAYF

— PokerGO (@PokerGO) February 18, 2025

Here is a look at the payouts and rankings points awarded at the final table:

Photo credit: PokerGO / Alicia Skillman.

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