Andrew Lichtenberger had nothing to show for the first nine events of the 2026 PokerGO Cup.
The high-stakes pro known as "LuckyChewy" eliminated every opponent at the final table of Event #10, a $15,000 NLH that drew 52 entries and built a $780,000 prize pool, to walk away with $257,400 and the last trophy of the series.
It was not a wire-to-wire cruise. Sam Soverel, a fellow PokerGO Studio regular, held an overwhelming chip lead over Lichtenberger going into heads-up play and won a half-dozen consecutive pots to put serious pressure on him. Lichtenberger turned things back around and closed out the title. Soverel took $163,800 as runner-up.
A Decorated Final Table
The field had no shortage of résumés. Joe McKeehen, the 2015 WSOP Main Event champion, bowed out in fourth place after his king-queen was beaten by the turned Wheel of the eventual winner. WPT champion Arthur Peacock was also eliminated by Lichtenberger during the final stages of play.
Brock Wilson, who had already clinched the overall series leaderboard title late Saturday after winning Event #4 and Event #6, could not extend his run at the final table. He fell in sixth for $46,800 before posing with the series trophy.
On Resilience
Lichtenberger entered the finale without a single series cash. He said the approach that carried him through was straightforward.
"I just always try to do my best and just put one foot in front of the other. I think it's important to be resilient as a tournament player."
He described shifting his mindset at the table as a way of restoring agency, and was direct about what he tries to avoid.
"I think it's very unhelpful to play poker in a way where you feel entitled to win, so I just try to accept everything that happens to me, and just to extract whatever beneficial lesson or effect from anything that occurs. So I think that's really helped me, increasingly so, over the course of my career, where if I lose, I just look for ways that I could have done better in all aspects."
Event #10 Final Table Results
| Place | Player | Country | Prize |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Andrew Lichtenberger | United States | $257,400 |
| 2 | Sam Soverel | United States | $163,800 |
| 3 | Arthur Peacock | United States | $109,200 |
| 4 | Joe McKeehen | United States | $78,000 |
| 5 | John Krpan | Canada | $62,400 |
| 6 | Brock Wilson | United States | $46,800 |
| 7 | Joey Weissman | United States | $31,200 |
