Brazilian pro Fabiano Kovalski capped off a breakout stop at EPT Barcelona by winning the €10,300 High Roller for €727,280, the largest live cash of his career and his second title of the festival after already taking down the Mystery Bounty event days earlier. The result pushes Kovalski’s lifetime tournament earnings past $4 million and cements EPT Barcelona 2026 as one of the strongest showings by a Brazilian player on the European tour in recent memory.
A Deep Field at One of Europe’s Toughest Stops
The High Roller drew 429 entries over three grueling days of play, building a total prize pool of €4,161,300, a field size that reflects just how competitive the buy-in level has become on the European Poker Tour. Casino Barcelona has long been considered one of the toughest modern stops on the circuit, drawing top-tier regulars from across Europe, Latin America, and Asia for its high roller schedule, and this year’s turnout was no exception. Kovalski had to navigate three full days of increasingly sharp competition, surviving multiple bubbles and building his stack through disciplined, patient play before arriving at the unofficial final table with a genuine shot at the title.
The Heads-Up Deal With Igor Picone
Kovalski’s run through the field ended in a heads-up negotiation with Belgium’s Igor Picone, another well-respected high-stakes regular. Rather than play the remaining chips out to a natural conclusion, the two players opted for a deal that reflected the chip counts at the time, with Kovalski taking €727,280 and Picone banking €595,920 as runner-up. Both figures represent career-high live cashes for the two players, a notable marker given that neither is a newcomer to high buy-in tournaments. Deals of this kind are common practice at the business end of high roller events, where the swings between finishing first and second can be enormous and players with significant equity often prefer to lock in a guaranteed payday rather than gamble it away over a handful of hands.
A Second Title at the Same Festival
What makes Kovalski’s week especially notable is that this was not his only cash at EPT Barcelona 2026. Days earlier, he had already won the €3,250 Mystery Bounty event, a tournament that drew 1,027 entries and paid out a total prize pool, including bounties, that made it one of the festival’s most heavily contested mid-stakes events. Winning two titles at the same major stop within the same week is a rare feat even for seasoned touring professionals, and it places Kovalski among a small handful of players who have managed the double at a single European Poker Tour festival in recent seasons. Taken together, the two results represent by far the best multi-event stretch of his career.
Kovalski’s Rise on the International Circuit
Kovalski has spent the past several seasons building a reputation as one of Brazil’s most consistent performers outside the country’s home tours, regularly making the trip to Europe and other international stops rather than sticking exclusively to the domestic Brazilian Series of Poker calendar. His EPT Barcelona results push his tracked lifetime tournament earnings beyond the $4 million mark, a milestone that places him firmly among the top tier of Brazilian tournament exports on the world stage, alongside other Brazilian names who have made deep runs on the EPT, WPT, and WSOP in 2026. For a country whose player pool has exploded in size over the past decade, largely fueled by the growth of BSOP and online satellites into major international events, Kovalski’s week in Barcelona is exactly the kind of result that reinforces Brazil’s growing footprint on tours far from home.
What the Win Means Going Forward
A result of this magnitude typically reshapes a player’s schedule for the months that follow, both in terms of the buy-in levels they can comfortably enter and the sponsorship or staking interest a career-best score tends to attract. With EPT Barcelona now behind him, Kovalski will likely be a name to watch on the fall festival calendar, whether that means further high roller runs on the EPT circuit, a trip to WPT Global’s growing slate of high-value series, or a return home for marquee BSOP events later in the year. For Brazilian poker fans, the win adds another data point to a season that has already produced a string of strong Brazilian showings on the international stage throughout 2026.
Players looking to sharpen their own understanding of late-stage tournament decisions, including when to negotiate a deal versus play it out, can find a practical breakdown in Poker Pro Academy’s WSOP guidewhich covers the fundamentals of final table strategy that apply just as much to a European high roller as to a bracelet event in Las Vegas. For now, Kovalski’s back-to-back cashes stand as one of the signature Brazilian storylines to come out of EPT Barcelona 2026, a week that saw a Brazilian player not just cash deep, but win twice at one of the toughest stops on the European calendar.
