Should online poker tournaments award trophies to the winners?
Poker players want something a bit more tangible than an online screenshot after they take down a big online MTT.
This week, I caught a post on X from Beriuzy, where he appealed for something I have wanted for years.
He and some high profile friends begged online operators to award trophies for winning their marquee events, and I agree with him.
WE WANT TROPHIESðŸ†ðŸ†ðŸ† @GGPoker @CoinPoker_OFF @ACR_POKER
get ur shit togetherNew video is out, link in my profile.
Thanks to all the friends🥰 pic.twitter.com/P5o9iNKNQ7
— Beriuzy (@beriuzy) January 26, 2026
This is what separates MTTs from cash games: they end with a 'champion'. Live poker events typically send their eventual victor home with some silverware. Why can't online poker do the same?
They would go broke, is the short answer. They obviously could never do it for every tournament, because the cost of sending a trophy for winning the Big $11 might be more than the rake collected.
But every online site has marquee festivals and events, and I believe part of the marketing budget should go into making trophies for the eventual winners.
Creating viral moments?
PokerStars does this for their COOP events, and obviously, GGPoker do this for their online WSOP series in the form of bracelets.
In my opinion, they could lead to viral-type moments on social media. We saw this happen during COVID, as online bracelet "unboxing" videos were a thing for a while.
Bracelets are a good reminder of why this might work. There is nothing objectively different to winning a $1,000 MTT in Las Vegas for $300k in a WSOP event, or doing the same thing for the same buy-in and prize in a WPT Prime event.
Subjectively, though, we all know the bracelet is more special. Even though they have been devalued in many ways, we still place an amount of importance on bracelets for no logical reason.
I think the same would happen if online sites regularly awarded trophies for their biggest tournaments.
Tournaments are about more than money
A few years ago, I made a final table of a PLO event at the IPO in Dublin. Like many events in Dublin, we were drinking and not taking it seriously, doing Jägerbombs and playing bluffing games.
That was until the TD brought a trophy out and put it on the table. None of us knew the event had a trophy, and when we found out, it had a profound effect.
Everyone stopped drinking, stopped the side bets, and everyone even stopped talking. The presence of a trophy, something which is objectively just a pain to travel home with, suddenly had us playing like our lives depended on it.
As much as we tell ourselves, poker is about the money, it's always about way more than that. We have all seen those tournament winner photos and had a sense of FOMO. Online players crave trophies as much as anyone else, and online operators should consider giving the odd one away.
