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Just seven of the more than 400 Platinum Pass holders in the PSPC field have been here before. Let’s catch up with some of the two-time Platinum Pass winners.
Jim Lovell, John Young, and Eugene Cernan. Those aren’t names you’ll find in the PokerStars Players Championship (PSPC) chip counts. Rather, they’re astronauts. Specifically, they’re the only three astronauts who have ever gone to the moon twice.
“There are people who make things happen, there are people who watch things happen, and there are people who wonder what happened,” Lovell said, famously. “To be successful, you need to be a person who makes things happen.”
More than 400 people made things happen to get to the PokerStars Players Championship.
They won Platinum Passes, each worth $30,000, and they’re all currently battling in the biggest poker tournament of the year.
But like Lovell, Young, and Cernan, only seven of them have been in this exact position before.
Only seven people in this enormous tournament, in the world, have won two Platinum Passes.
IT’S GOOD TO BE BACK
“When I left the Bahamas [in 2019], I thought that was it. That it was a one-time thing,” says Pierre Lewandowski, on a Day 1 break in the big one. “But it’s so good to be back.”
Pierre Lewandowski won his second Platinum Pass on his 26th birthday. It was November 2020, less than a year after he arrived home from the inaugural PSPC in 2019.
The Frenchman, who lives in Amsterdam, won his first ticket to the Bahamas in a Megastack event in Dublin. For the second go around, he switched his Pass acquisition methods online and won himself another trip via the Mega Path promotion. Not a bad birthday present.
The second edition of the PSPC feels bigger than the first in every way, according to Lewandowski. “This poker room is better, the stage is awesome,” he says. “It’s huge!”
Yet he remains incredibly calm, perhaps due to his prior PSPC experience. He loves the fact that everyone had time to get to know the Platinum Pass winners in the delayed build-up, and that this time around, the PCA Main Event went first.
He even arrived in the Bahamas early, allowing himself time to dabble in a couple of PCA $1K side events, cashing one (“fifty per cent in the money, that’s good for me!”).
The extra time in the Caribbean has given Lewandowski the opportunity to meet a lot of the new batch of Platinum Pass winners, including many from his home nation. But he’s also been able to share memories with some original Pass winners who he got to know back in 2019, and who have also made the trip again, Pass or no Pass.
“It’s nice to see a mix of new faces and some familiar ones,” he says. “There’s so much enthusiasm from everyone, both players and staff,” he says. “Everything is just really good.”
MILLIONS TO ONE
That’s a sentiment shared by Alex Irwin.
“It’s the best poker event in the world in my opinion and to play it twice is…it’s just unthinkable how good of a chance it is,” he tells us, in between catching up with the dozens of friends he’s made on this wild PSPC experience.
“I made some lifelong friends at the first one,” he says. “Nikhil, Asif…for all three of us to be back here as double Pass winners, the odds are millions to one.”
Irwin, from Bangor, Northern Ireland, took down the €330 Marbella Cup back in June 2018 to win his first Pass. He’d been actively chasing one for the first half of the year, eventually succeeded, and won himself €44,000 in the process.
Where he had eight months to prepare back in 2019, this time around, he had less than a fortnight. Irwin was randomly selected as a contestant in a recent Poker in the Ears competition and–as it should be, to be honest–his PSPC 2019 knowledge was spot on.
“It’s very surreal,” Irwin says, glancing around at the impressive venue. “I forgot how good it was until I got here! It’s special and there’s such a great atmosphere. It’s just the best. Even if I don’t win a penny, I’m still a winner.”
Here’s a full list of the two-time Platinum Pass winners (at the time of writing, all seven are still in and doing rather well, too).
TWO-TIME PLATINUM PASS WINNERS
Jenn Carter
Day 2 chip count: 124,000
First Platinum Pass: Beat 21,000 players to win a PokerStars freeroll
Second Platinum Pass: Won through the Mega Path
Cesar Omar Del Pino Hanouadi
Day 2 chip count: 78,000
First Platinum Pass: Won PSF Marbella Main Event
Second Platinum Pass: Won through the Platinum Grind promotion
Alex Irwin
Day 2 chip count: 86,500
First Platinum Pass: Won Marbella Cup
Second Platinum Pass: Won through Poker in the Ears competition
Pierre Lewandowski
Day 2 chip count: 38,500
First Platinum Pass: Won Dublin Megastack
Second Platinum Pass: Won through the Mega Path
Nikhil Segel
Day 2 chip count: 67,500
First Platinum Pass: Won the #MyUltimateSweat competition
Second Platinum Pass: Awarded Pass for his community efforts
Paulo Milani
Day 2 chip count: 57,000
First Platinum Pass: BSOP All In or Fold event
Second Platinum Pass: Won through the Mega Path
Asif Warris
Day 2 chip count: 32,500
First Platinum Pass: Won 2019 PSPC Persistence award
Second Platinum Pass: Won through Poker in the Ears competition
MORE ABOUT THE PSPC
- PSPC official site
- PSPC Information Hub
- Full tournament series results