Boris Kolev added another line to an already decorated Cyprus résumé, taking down the $10,400 Mystery Bounty at the 2026 Onyx High Roller Series for $129,000. The Bulgarian defeated Aleksandr Kirichenko heads-up at the Merit Royal Diamond Hotel Casino & Spa, a venue where Kolev has quietly built one of the more impressive track records on the high-stakes circuit.
A Field of 114 Chases a Seven-Figure Prize Pool
The Mystery Bounty format drew 114 entries to the Onyx High Roller Series, building a prize pool of $1,094,400 against the $10,400 buy-in. Mystery Bounty events have become a fixture on high-stakes calendars over the past few years precisely because of that math: a healthy buy-in combined with a bounty structure that can hand any player a life-changing envelope regardless of where they finish, layered on top of the standard prize pool payouts.
Kolev entered the final day of play in commanding position, sitting as chip leader among the 17 players who advanced with 1,700,000 chips in front of him. Carrying that kind of stack into the business end of a high roller field is no guarantee of a win, but it gave Kolev room to apply pressure through the rest of the bracket while shorter stacks were forced to look for spots to double up.
A Second Straight Deep Run Ends in Kolev’s Favor
The final heads-up matchup pitted Kolev against Aleksandr Kirichenko of the Russian Federation, who had also made a deep run in the Onyx High Roller Series’ $15,300 6-Max event earlier in the same series, finishing third in that tournament for $128,000. Facing Kolev’s big stack in the Mystery Bounty final, Kirichenko ultimately settled for the runner-up finish, while Kolev closed out the win to add the $129,000 top prize to his season.
The result extends a pattern that has followed Kolev at this specific venue for more than a year now. He returned to the felt at the Merit Royal Diamond after banking a million-dollar score there roughly a year earlier, and this latest title suggests the connection between player and property is not a coincidence. Some players simply run well at certain rooms, and for Kolev, Cyprus has become that room.
Why Mystery Bounty Formats Keep Growing
Part of what makes Mystery Bounty tournaments so popular with both recreational players and grinders is the unpredictability baked into the format. Unlike a standard progressive knockout, where bounty values are fixed and known in advance, Mystery Bounty prizes are drawn at random once a player is eliminated, meaning a min-cash bustout can occasionally turn into a headline-grabbing score. That randomness adds a layer of drama to every knockout, and it has made Mystery Bounty structures a staple of major series from the WSOP down to smaller regional festivals.
For readers less familiar with how bounty structures interact with standard tournament payouts, or how major series like this one are typically organized across multiple bracket events feeding into a marquee week, Poker Pro Academy’s guide to how major poker series are structured is a useful primer on the format conventions that shape events like the Onyx High Roller Series.
A Strong Summer for the Onyx Series
Kolev’s win adds to what has already been a productive stretch for the Onyx High Roller Series at the Merit Royal Diamond, with multiple six and seven-figure scores handed out across the series’ various bracket events this summer. For a series still building its reputation relative to more established high-stakes tours, that kind of consistent output, paired with recognizable winners returning to the venue year after year, is exactly the sort of track record that keeps drawing top talent back to Cyprus.
It also highlights how much overlap there tends to be among the small pool of players who travel the high-stakes circuit full time. Kirichenko’s runner-up finish here, coming just days after his third-place run in the same series’ 6-Max event, is a reminder that the same handful of names tend to resurface again and again across a single festival, simply because the pool of players willing and able to fire $10,000-plus buy-ins repeatedly is relatively small to begin with.
What Comes Next for the Circuit
With this title in hand, Kolev heads into the rest of the year with his Cyprus form fully intact and another six-figure score to show for it. For a circuit that increasingly rewards players who can travel and adapt across formats, from fast 6-Max shootouts to sprawling Mystery Bounty fields, Kolev’s continued success at one specific venue stands out as something closer to a specialty than a coincidence.
As PokerNews reported, Kolev’s win caps a strong showing at the venue that has become something of a home away from home for him on the high-stakes circuit. With Cyprus continuing to carve out a bigger role on the international calendar, results like this one only add to the case for keeping an eye on the Merit Royal Diamond every time a major series rolls through.
