SA Poker Open returns to Montecasino with R10m guaranteed and a Hendon Mob debut
Tsogo Sun has the 2026 SA Poker Open running at Montecasino's Poker Lounge in Fourways from 11 September to 8 November, a nine-week festival it bills as the biggest poker series in Africa, with more than R10 million guaranteed and an estimated R23 million in total prize pools. The headline addition is The Hendon Mob SA Millions, the first South African event to carry the database's name: R9,000 to enter, R1.5 million guaranteed, multiple Day 1 flights. The R100,000 Super High Roller Freezeout also returns and grows from 27 seats, which sold out with a waiting list last time, to 36, played out over three days with a 500,000 starting stack and hour-long levels. Flagship guarantees run from the R4 million Main Event through a R2 million High Roller, the R1 million ShuffleUp Poker Championship, a R750,000 Mini Main Maxi, a R600,000 Deep Stack Classic and a R500,000 Ultimate Tournament.
The series matters beyond its prize pool, because of how little competition it has. A sweep of the two big South African casino groups' own websites this week found live tournament poker advertised in exactly one place: this Poker Lounge programme. Tsogo Sun's site-wide search for poker returns the series page and nothing else, so Suncoast in Durban, Silverstar near Krugersdorp and Gold Reef City publish no poker beyond a word in a table-game list or a bank of Video Poker machines. Sun International's two flagships are clearer still: GrandWest in Cape Town and Time Square in Pretoria name only Raise 'em Poker and Magic Poker, both played against the house rather than against other players. Emperors Palace in Kempton Park lists two poker tables in its main casino at a R50 minimum bet, priced the way a dealer-banked game is priced, and publishes no room, no stakes and no calendar.
That makes Montecasino the country's live poker calendar rather than one stop on it, and the nine-week run to 8 November the practical answer to where a visiting player goes. Exact dates and buy-ins for each event sit only in Tsogo Sun's downloadable PS17 schedules, which are scanned images rather than readable text, so players should take the dates from the operator's own PDFs.
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