Winamax Review
Standalone · 12 ambassadors · Last updated April 2026
France's dominant poker room - softer pools, six-max live tours, and a roster that actually plays there
Winamax has led the French regulated market since online poker opened in France in 2010 and still commands the biggest player pool in the country. The software is proprietary and mobile-first, the Expresso jackpot SNG format is Winamax's own invention, and the ambassador roster is stacked with proven tournament winners who genuinely grind the site - not just wear the patch.
Visit Winamax →01 The signings that matter
Adrián Mateos
Adrian Mateos is the strongest argument for Winamax's credibility at the highest stakes. With over $54 million in live tournament winnings and five WSOP bracelets - including his fifth in 2025, making him the youngest player in history to reach that milestone at age 30 - Mateos is a legitimate GOAT-conversation player in modern tournament poker. He won the WSOP Europe Main Event at 19 and was the first Spaniard to win an EPT title. His presence on the Winamax roster signals that the room recruits seriously, not just for reach.
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Davidi Kitai
Davidi Kitai is one of only ten players in history to hold the Triple Crown - a WSOP bracelet, a WPT title, and an EPT title. The Belgian pro has three WSOP bracelets across different Hold'em variants and over $11.7 million in live earnings, making him the all-time money leader in Belgium. Kitai has been a Winamax Team Pro since 2008, the year the room launched its ambassador program - a relationship that spans the entire history of the brand.
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Gus Hansen
Gus Hansen's April 2024 signing was the biggest brand statement Winamax had made in years. The Great Dane was the face of the televised poker boom in the early 2000s - three WPT titles, a WSOP Europe bracelet, and a reputation as the most aggressive player anyone had seen on television. He accumulated over $10 million in live earnings before stepping back from poker for nearly a decade. His return under the Winamax banner adds international name recognition and an unmistakable personality to a team that already had serious results.
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Leo Margets
Leo Margets made history at the 2025 WSOP Main Event by becoming the first woman in 30 years to reach the final table, finishing seventh for $1,500,000 in front of a global audience. The Spanish Winamax ambassador had already won a bracelet in 2021 and is a regular on both the live circuit and Winamax's own streaming content. With 103,000 Instagram followers and a bilingual Spanish-French audience, Margets is the room's most important ambassador in the Iberian market.
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Patrick Bruel
Patrick Bruel is one of France's most famous musicians, with over 1.6 million social media followers and a decades-long public profile that far exceeds any poker player on the roster. His genuine passion for poker - he has over $1.5 million in live tournament cashes and regularly appears at WSOP and EPT events - makes the partnership authentic rather than purely promotional. Bruel is the main reason Winamax reaches recreational French players who would never interact with a traditional poker brand.
Profile →02 At a glance
03 The room the French market built
Winamax was founded in Paris in 1999 as a video game publisher and pivoted to online gambling when France regulated online poker in 2010 - one of the first licensed operators to go live under the new ARJEL framework (now the ANJ, the Autorite Nationale des Jeux). In the fifteen years since, it has become the default poker room for French players in a way that PokerStars was never able to replicate, because France's ring-fenced liquidity rules mean international rooms compete directly against a local operator that understands the market, the language, and the players.
The practical effect of that ring-fenced structure is significant for any player considering Winamax: you are playing almost exclusively against French, Spanish, and Portuguese players, with shared liquidity across those licensed markets. That pool is smaller than GGPoker or PokerStars - around 2,600 concurrent cash players at peak - but it is substantially softer. French regulation restricts aggressive multi-accounting and HUD use in ways that keep the casual player proportion high, and the culture of the room tilts recreational. If you are a grinder looking for the biggest pool, go elsewhere. If you want the softest games your skill level can sustain, Winamax is hard to argue with.
The 2026 news that most demonstrates how seriously Winamax takes its French-first identity: the room is broadcasting the entire 2026 WSOP schedule free on its YouTube channel, with French-language commentary running over 10 hours per night from May 29 through the Main Event final table in early August. No paywall, no subscription - just the WSOP in French, every night, for the country that has produced some of the strongest tournament players in the modern era.
04 Software and formats: what you're actually getting
Winamax's software is proprietary - not a white-label skin of any network. The client runs on Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android, and the mobile version has been a priority since 2010, when Winamax launched what it claims was the world's first real-money poker app. The lobby is clean and French-centric, with fast filters by variant, buy-in, and format. You can play up to four tables simultaneously on mobile, more on desktop, with a Playground tool that arranges windows for multi-tablers.
The format library is broader than most regulated-market rooms. Beyond standard NLHE and PLO, Winamax offers Go Fast (fast-fold 6-max with a built-in Hold Up bonus promo), Short Track (5 big blind starting stacks for push-fold cash), FLOOOP (bomb pot format - ante then flop, no preflop), and Incognito anonymous cash games. The Expresso tab is the busiest non-MTT section of the lobby, with games running from €0.25 micro-stakes through €500 high-stakes around the clock.
The one real software limitation is the mobile table cap and the withdrawal constraint: wire transfer is the only withdrawal method, which means processing times of one to three business days. There is no cryptocurrency support, which reflects French ANJ regulatory policy rather than a product choice. Deposits are faster via Skrill, Neteller, or card, but withdrawals go bank-only.
05 Rake and rewards: what you actually pay back
Winamax's cash-game rake is a flat 6.5%, which is meaningfully higher than the 5% standard at GGPoker and most international rooms. The cap varies by player count and stakes - at NL/PLO 20-600, a 9-max table is capped at €3 per pot. The 6.5% rate reflects the ANJ regulatory environment, which imposes costs that international unregulated rooms do not face, but the honest assessment is that it is the highest rake of any major regulated European room.
The loyalty program runs on Miles - you earn 4 Miles per €1 of rake paid, with a monthly VIP tier system that multiplies your earning rate. Monthly tiers (Chrome through Platinum) provide a base multiplier; annual tiers (Diamond I through Red Diamond) layer on top for high-volume grinders. The maximum effective rakeback at Red Diamond status is approximately 30% - achievable only at very high annual rake volumes. Most recreational players at Chrome or Aluminum tier realize 5% rakeback, which at a 6.5% rake rate means the net cost is still higher than most alternatives.
The honest player math: if you are a recreational player grinding two or three sessions per week, Winamax's softer player pool will likely outweigh the higher rake. If you are a volume grinder running 50,000+ hands per month, the rake differential compared to a 5% room compounds quickly and the rakeback at mid-tier VIP status does not fully close the gap.
Winamax cash-game rake caps by stake and players (NLHE/PLO)
| Stakes | 2-player cap | 3-player cap | 4-player cap | 5-9 player cap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NL/PLO 20-600 | €1.50 | €2.00 | €2.50 | €3.00 |
| NL/PLO 1000 | €2.00 | €2.50 | €3.00 | €3.00 |
| NL/PLO 2000 | €2.50 | €3.00 | €3.50 | €4.00 |
Winamax VIP Miles program - monthly and annual tiers
| Tier | Threshold | Multiplier | Approx. rakeback |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chrome | 20-69 miles/month | 1x | ~5% |
| Aluminum | 70-249 miles/month | 1x | ~5% |
| Bronze | 250-999 miles/month | 1.25x | ~6.25% |
| Silver | 1,000-2,999 miles/month | 1.5x | ~7.5% |
| Gold | 3,000-5,999 miles/month | 2x | ~10% |
| Platinum | 6,000+ miles/month | 2.5x | ~12.5% |
| Diamond I | 50,000-99,999 miles/year | 3x | ~15% |
| Diamond III | 250,000-499,999 miles/year | 4x | ~20% |
| Diamond V | 1,000,000-2,499,999 miles/year | 5x | ~25% |
| Red Diamond | 2,500,000+ miles/year | 6x | ~30% |
06 Tournaments: the live-online hybrid that defines the room
Winamax's tournament ecosystem is unusual in how tightly it integrates online satellites with live finals. The Winamax Poker Tour (WiPT) is a domestic French tour with regional stops and an annual Grande Finale - you can qualify online from as little as a €10 satellite, earn a live package, and compete in a real-money final with a sword as the trophy. The 2026 Grande Finale broke the series entry record at 3,610 runners. All major events are six-handed, which is rare for a live tour and creates noticeably different game dynamics than traditional 9-max structures.
The Winamax SISMIX series is a separate hybrid concept: part online satellite grind, part live festival in Marrakech, Morocco. The SISMIX Main Event typically runs with a 5,000-5,500 MAD buy-in and 22 events including a Battle Royale, High Roller, Royal Omaha, and daily Sprint events. The 2025 edition ran May 19-25 in Marrakech with several hundred runners across flights.
Online, the flagship is the Winamax Series with over €1 million guaranteed in the Million Week event (€50 buy-in) and a regular Sunday schedule headlined by the Sunday One Time and Sunday Knockout. The Expresso Challenge daily leaderboard rewards the top 50 Expresso players at each stake with prizes ranging from 0.5 to 10 buy-ins. Winamax also runs a live television show, Alerte Expresso, launched in January 2025, in which players who hit the Expresso Jackpot multiplier can compete in a studio-based Expresso game for prizes up to €1 million - the third seat is available to online players in real time.
07 Who Winamax is actually right for
French or Spanish players: yes, unreservedly. The software is in your language, the tournaments are built around your calendar, the live tour stops in your country, and the player pool is your neighbours. There is no better-regulated option for French poker players than Winamax. It is the home room in a way that no international operator can replicate.
Recreational players looking for soft games: yes. The French-market ring-fence means you are playing against a disproportionately recreational pool. HUD bans and ANJ responsible gambling requirements keep multi-accounting suppressed and rake-back grinders from dominating the lower stakes. If you want to play €0.10/€0.25 or €0.25/€0.50 NLHE without being three-bet every hand by tracker-equipped regulars, Winamax is one of the best options in Europe.
Volume cash grinders: conditionally. The 6.5% rake is a real cost, and the maximum 30% rakeback at Red Diamond requires enormous annual rake volume. At mid-tier VIP status (Silver to Gold), the effective rakeback of 7.5-10% applied to a 6.5% rake means your net rake cost is around 5.9-6.0% - comparable to or worse than rooms with 5% rake and moderate rakeback. This is tolerable if the player pool quality justifies it; it is hard to justify if you are choosing purely on rake economics.
International players outside France and Spain: Winamax has a restricted country list that excludes most of Western Europe (Germany, UK, Italy, Netherlands among others) and all of North America. If you are reading this from one of those markets, Winamax is not an option regardless of the review. Always verify your country's eligibility before depositing.
08 The verdict
Winamax is not trying to be the global default the way GGPoker is. It is the best poker room in France, probably the best in Spain, and it has built that position through fifteen years of running a tight regulated product, creating its own formats (Expresso), running its own live tours (WiPT, SISMIX), and assembling an ambassador roster of serious tournament players who actually play on the site.
The 2026 WSOP free broadcast deal is the clearest signal of the room's current ambitions: reach recreational French players who want to watch poker but have never deposited, introduce them to the game through free content, and convert them to the platform where the ambassadors they are watching actually play. It is a smart, France-first strategy from a room that has always understood its market better than any competitor.
The honest weaknesses - above-market rake, modest rakeback ceiling, wire-only withdrawals, email-only support - are real. They are less important if you are a recreational player depositing €200 to play the WiPT satellite series than if you are a professional grinding 100,000 hands of cash per month. Know which player you are before you evaluate them.
09 Quick facts
10 Full Winamax ambassador roster (12)
Top 5 by lifetime earnings
| Ambassador | Country | Lifetime |
|---|---|---|
| Adrián Mateos | Spain | $55.4M |
| João Vieira | Portugal | $21M |
| Mustapha Kanit | Italy | $18.4M |
| Davidi Kitai | Belgium | $11.7M |
| Gus Hansen | Denmark | $10.5M |
Full roster
Patrick Bruel
Bruno Lopes
Gus Hansen
Adrián Mateos
Mustapha Kanit
Davidi Kitai
Leo Margets
João Vieira
Julien Sitbon
Pierre Calamusa
Romain Lewis
Émilien Pitavy
Inside Winamax
