Brazilian pro Fabiano Kovalski came within one heads-up match of a WSOP bracelet this week, finishing runner-up in the $25,000 High Roller Championship on the WSOP Online series for $699,120. The final table also produced one of the most talked about hands of the online series so far, a brutal bad beat that eliminated Daniel Negreanu in fourth place and ended his bid for a ninth career bracelet.
A Stacked Final Table for the High Roller Championship
The $25,000 buy-in event, played on GGPoker as part of the WSOP Online schedule, drew a field packed with recognizable names from both the high stakes and mainstream tournament worlds. Fellow Brazilian Pedro Neves made a deep run of his own, finishing fifth for $320,548, while German pro Ole Schemion took sixth for $247,176. Further down the payout ladder, Roman Emelyanov banked $190,599 in seventh and Parahat Nurmuhammedov collected $146,971 for eighth, underlining just how top heavy and competitive the field was from the money bubble all the way to the final two.
Kovalski’s run to heads-up was itself a strong result against that kind of opposition, but the story of the final table ended up being decided the round before he even got there.
The Bad Beat That Ended Negreanu’s Bracelet Bid
With four players remaining, Daniel Negreanu got his stack in with pocket tens against eventual champion Casimir Seire’s 9-8. It was close to a coinflip in Negreanu’s favor before the cards were dealt, the kind of spot a player wants to be on the right side of with a bracelet on the line. The board ran out ace, nine, six, eight, king, giving Seire two pair on the turn and sending Negreanu to the rail in fourth place for $415,699. Negreanu summed up the moment bluntly afterward, saying that was the tournament’s chance to win slipping away in a single hand.
The elimination was a cruel one given the stakes. Negreanu has won two bracelets in the past three years after an 11 year drought between his sixth and seventh, including an eighth bracelet victory during the live summer series in 2026. A win here would have made it two bracelets in a matter of months and moved him to nine for his career, so the manner of the exit added extra sting to an already brutal cooler.
Kovalski Falls Just Short in Heads-Up
With Negreanu and third place finisher Erwann Pecheux, who earned $539,095, both out of the way, the title came down to Kovalski against Seire. Seire ultimately closed out the tournament to claim the bracelet and the $906,647 top prize, with Kovalski forced to settle for the $699,120 runner-up score. Even in defeat, the result stands as one of the largest single scores of Kovalski’s career and continues a strong run for Brazilian players across the high stakes online circuit this year.
For players curious about how bracelet events like this compare to the traditional live tournament format, our WSOP guide breaks down how the bracelet system works across both the live and online series.
Another Deep Run for Brazil at the Virtual Felt
Kovalski’s runner-up finish adds to what has been a productive year for Brazilian players on the high stakes online scene, and it came in one of the most prestigious bracelet events GGPoker hosts each year. A $25,000 buy-in High Roller Championship draws a small, sharp field almost entirely made up of proven winners, which makes reaching heads-up in the first place a meaningful achievement regardless of how the final hand falls. Pedro Neves’s fifth place finish in the same event only reinforces how deep the Brazilian presence ran at this final table specifically.
Bracelet events of this size do not come around often, and the buy-in alone filters out all but the most well rolled and well prepared online specialists. Kovalski’s ability to navigate that field down to the final two, in a tournament that also chewed up a former champion of Negreanu’s caliber along the way, says as much about the quality of his tournament as the outcome does.
What Comes Next
With the WSOP Online series continuing to run out its bracelet schedule, more high value results like this are expected before the series wraps for the year. For Kovalski, the near miss adds another six figure score to an already strong campaign, while Negreanu will look to bounce back from one of the more painful exits of his own long WSOP history. Seire, meanwhile, walks away with a bracelet and the biggest title of his career so far, on the back of a final table that will be remembered as much for its brutal turn card as for who ultimately won it.
