Thomas Eychenne

Last Updated on August 24, 2026 by Bala Kumar

Thomas Eychenne is a French professional poker player and the reigning EPT Barcelona Main Event champion, and one of the notable names on the European live tournament circuit. After years of deep runs without a title, his August 2025 breakthrough win in Barcelona kicked off the best twelve months of his career, a stretch that now includes a WSOP Europe Main Event final table, a second Barcelona title, and an ongoing bid to become one of the few players ever to defend an EPT Main Event crown.

$5,611,586+ Total Live Earnings

2 Live Tournament Titles

120 Live Tournament Cashes

€1,217,175 Biggest Single Cash

422nd All-Time Money List (Hendon Mob)

Thomas Eychenne Quick Facts

Category	Information
Full Name	Thomas Pierre Jean Bruno Eychenne
Poker Nickname / Alias	“La Watch”
Nationality	French
Hometown	Lyon, France
Current Base	Malta (relocated 2011)
Profession	Professional Poker Player
Live Cashes Since	September 2013 (bulk of results from October 2021 onward)
Total Live Tournament Earnings	$5,611,586 (Hendon Mob, latest cash May 8, 2026)
Biggest Live Cash	€1,217,175 ($1,426,900) — 2025 EPT Barcelona Main Event
All-Time Money List Ranking	422nd (Hendon Mob)
Tournament Titles	2 (2025 EPT Barcelona Main Event; 2026 PokerStars Open High Roller, EPT Barcelona)
WSOP Bracelets	0
Career WSOP Earnings	$1,308,049 across 47 cashes, 2 final tables
Career EPT Earnings	$1,512,247 across 5 cashes, 1 title, 1 final table
Playing Specialty	Heads-up and short-handed formats (by his own account)

Note: Earnings figures vary slightly between databases — Hendon Mob lists $5,611,586, while CardPlayer’s tracker lists $5,707,567 (which includes some confirmed online results). This profile uses Hendon Mob as the primary reference, the industry standard for live-only earnings.

Early Life & Background

Thomas Eychenne grew up in Lyon, France, and discovered poker while studying at business school, where he began playing online in his spare time. Rather than gravitating toward the deep-stack, full-ring cash games most beginners start with, Eychenne found his edge early in heads-up and short-handed formats — a specialty that would define his entire career.

In 2011, he relocated to Malta, where he has been based for most of his career, eventually running his own coaching and staking team to mentor younger players — work he has continued to describe as a meaningful part of his poker life even as his own results have grown.

Titles & Tournament Wins

Eychenne has two confirmed live tournament titles on his record, both coming at the same festival a year apart:

#	Event	Buy-In	Prize	Year
1	EPT Barcelona Main Event	€5,300	€1,217,175 (heads-up deal vs. Sebastian Ionita)	August 2025
2	PokerStars Open High Roller, EPT Barcelona	€2,700	~€589,395	August 2026

Beyond his two outright wins, his résumé includes one runner-up finish (€25,000 NLH, EPT Monte Carlo, 2023) and multiple deep final-table runs, including a 7th-place finish at the record-breaking 2026 WSOP Europe Main Event.

Career Timeline

Period	Milestone
Sept 2013	First recorded live cash
Oct 2021	21st, $1,500 Millionaire Maker (WSOP), $28,480
Nov 2021	6th, $3,500 event at The Wynn, $153,127 (career-high at the time)
Jan 2023	7th, $25,000 PokerStars Players Championship (Bahamas), $801,000
Apr 2023	Runner-up, €25,000 NLH, EPT Monte Carlo, €323,100
Jan 2026	5th, $100K Onyx event, $375,000
2025 WSOP Paradise	3rd, $10,500 Super PLOSSUS, $281,000
2025 WSOP Las Vegas	47th, Main Event, $200,000; 5th, $25K Heads-Up Championship, $86,000
Aug 2025	1st, EPT Barcelona Main Event, €1,217,175 — first career title
Apr 2026	7th, WSOP Europe Main Event (Prague), €245,000 — reached the final table as a co-chip leader
May 2026	Led EPT Monte Carlo Main Event through Day 3 (1,846,000 chips, 150+ BBs); busted 22nd for €28,150 after a rough final level
Aug 2026	Won the €2,700 PokerStars Open High Roller at EPT Barcelona, then entered the €5,300 Main Event as defending champion

The Breakthrough: 2025 EPT Barcelona Main Event

Eychenne’s title-defining moment came in August 2025, when he outlasted a 2,045-entry field — the third-largest Main Event in EPT history at the time — to win the EPT Barcelona Main Event. He entered the final table second in chips behind Romania’s Sebastian Ionita, and the two survived as the last two standing before agreeing to a heads-up deal that left €100,000 and the trophy still in play. Eychenne closed it out, collecting €1,217,175 (Ionita took €1,117,175 as runner-up).

It was, by his own description, an emotional release after years of near-misses. “It feels amazing,” he said afterward. “I’m struggling to come down from the cloud I’m on right now… I have to enjoy it because life moves quickly.” A group of longtime friends flew in from Paris specifically to support him at the final table, friends, he noted, who “have nothing to do with poker.” During deal negotiations, Eychenne made clear that heads-up play was his specialty, and he backed that up at the table: he controlled the heads-up match and closed out the title.

The win pushed his career earnings past $4 million at the time and added 2,160 Card Player Player of the Year points, moving him inside the top 100 of that year’s standings.

The Follow-Up Year: Chip Leads, A Near-Miss, And A Final Table

What followed was arguably an even more remarkable stretch, even without a second title to show for it immediately.

WSOP Europe Main Event, April 2026: Eychenne bounced back at the record-breaking 2026 WSOP Europe Main Event in Prague, which drew 2,617 entries and a €13,085,000 prize pool — the largest WSOPE Main Event ever held. He bagged the overall chip lead after Day 2 with 2.01 million chips, then survived a rollercoaster stretch of the tournament where he spent long periods nursing a stack below 10 big blinds before catching a heater — doubling with Q♦4♦, then finding aces at exactly the right moment to eliminate two players in quick succession and catapult into the final table with the second-largest stack. He told PokerNews beforehand that he needed “a top-three finish” to offset a rough downswing since Barcelona. He didn’t quite get there, busting in 7th place for €245,000 as Marius Kudzmanas went on to win the bracelet.

EPT Monte Carlo, May 2026: The following month, Eychenne looked ready to add a second title. He bagged the overnight chip lead after Day 3 of the €5,300 Main Event with 1,846,000 chips — over 150 big blinds — out of a field of 1,011 entries. He carried a strong stack into Day 4 as one of five former EPT Main Event champions still alive in the field. However, a disastrous final level saw him double up two opponents in quick succession, and he was eliminated in 22nd place for €28,150 — a stark reminder of how quickly deep stacks can evaporate in late-stage tournament poker.

EPT Barcelona, August 2026: As the festival’s defending Main Event champion returned to Casino Barcelona, Eychenne opened his title defense with a win — taking down the €2,700 PokerStars Open High Roller. Hours later, in his first session of the €5,300 Main Event he won a year earlier, he bagged a short stack of just 14,500 chips against a 30,000 starting stack — leaving his bid for back-to-back Main Event glory alive, but with real work ahead of him on Day 2.

Poker Strategy & Playing Style

Eychenne has been consistent in describing himself as a heads-up and short-handed specialist rather than a mass-field generalist — a claim well supported by his results. His two deepest career runs at marquee events (EPT Barcelona 2025, WSOP Europe Main Event 2026) both came down to survival through late-stage short-handed play against elite fields, and his signature win came via a heads-up deal negotiation where he explicitly staked his claim as the stronger heads-up player before backing it up at the table.

Heads-Up Specialization

By his own account and by observers’ descriptions, heads-up play is where Eychenne separates himself from the field. At the 2025 EPT Barcelona final table, he came into heads-up play against Sebastian Ionita with roughly even stacks after a prize-pool chop left the trophy and an additional €100,000 still in play. Rather than settle for a cautious, small-edge grind, he reportedly shifted into what one recap described as “another gear,” winning pot after pot to build a commanding lead before closing out the match — a final-hand knockout that observers described as dominant rather than close. His 5th-place finish in the 2025 WSOP $25,000 Heads-Up NLH Championship, a specialist bracelet event that draws a small, elite field built entirely around one-on-one play, is further evidence that this isn’t a one-tournament fluke.

Online Foundation

Playing under the alias “La Watch,” Eychenne built an online following before his live breakthrough by streaming a bankroll challenge — turning an initial €10 stake into over €1 million through disciplined stakes progression. That project reflects the same patient, incremental approach visible in his live results: build a stack methodically, then strike hardest once heads-up or short-handed play narrows the field.

Patient, Opportunistic Short-Stack Play

Eychenne’s run through the 2026 WSOP Europe Main Event final stretch showcases the other half of his game. He spent an extended period of Day 5 nursing a stack below 10 big blinds — a spot where many players would already be looking for any reasonable double-up spot rather than waiting for a premium one. Instead, he stayed patient, doubled first with a speculative Q♦4♦, then found pocket aces at exactly the right moment to eliminate two opponents in quick succession and rocket from near-elimination to a final-table stack. That pattern — surviving a genuine short-stack squeeze through selective aggression rather than a spray-and-pray approach — lines up closely with the discipline he says he developed grinding online bankroll challenges from a small starting stake.

Self-Aware About Variance

Unlike some players who lean into an aura of invincibility after a big win, Eychenne has been notably candid about the role of luck in his results. After his EPT Barcelona win, he specifically noted that heads-up poker still involves real variance, and that while he believed his edge in that format was genuine, it was also small — a level of humility that suggests a player who studies outcomes honestly rather than attributing every win purely to skill. That same instinct showed up again after his hot run to the WSOP Europe final table, when he told PokerNews he’d been on a rough downswing since Barcelona and “almost” felt he didn’t deserve the sudden run of good fortune that got him there — a habit of separating variance from skill that’s relatively rare to hear articulated so directly by an active pro.

Format Specialization Snapshot

Strategic Element	Eychenne’s Approach
Heads-Up Play	Self-described specialty; dominant closeout at EPT Barcelona 2025; 5th in WSOP $25K Heads-Up Championship
Short-Stack Survival	Patient, selective aggression rather than forced spray-and-pray shoves (WSOPE 2026)
Online Foundation	Built discipline via a streamed bankroll challenge (€10 to over €1 million) under alias “La Watch”
Coaching Background	Runs a staking/coaching team, indicating a systemized rather than purely intuitive approach
Mindset	Openly attributes part of his results to variance rather than claiming pure skill dominance
Consistency Pattern	Both career titles came at the same festival (EPT Barcelona) a year apart

Current Status (2026)

As of August 24, 2026, Eychenne remains alive in the EPT Barcelona Main Event field, chasing a rare back-to-back title defense. His 2026 season so far also includes a WSOP Europe Main Event final table (7th, €245,000) and a deep, ultimately unsuccessful run at EPT Monte Carlo (22nd, €28,150).

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