Brazil delivered an all countryman final in the WCOOP Boot Camp on PokerStars, as José Bazzo, playing under the screen name “zeeh_pb,” defeated fellow Brazilian Gustavo Bigethi heads up to win Event #21-L, a $109 buy in tournament that drew 1,009 entries.
The victory earned Bazzo $15,415, while Bigethi, competing as “Biguethi339,” settled for $8,303 as runner-up after falling in the final hand of a match that capped a marathon field. It is exactly the kind of story the WCOOP Boot Camp was built to produce, a modest buy in turning into a life sized score for a grinder willing to put in the hours.
A Marathon Field in the WCOOP Boot Camp
PokerStars built the WCOOP Boot Camp around accessible buy ins paired with free coaching sessions from BBZ Poker, aiming to give recreational and semi professional players a structured runway into the online tournament grind. Event #21-L fit that mold perfectly. At $109 to enter, the tournament was affordable enough to attract well over a thousand entries, and the “L” in the event name signaled a slower, deeper structure that let skilled patience win out over raw variance.
With 1,009 entries on the line, the prize pool supported a payout ladder that ran deep into the field, but only the final two players were still standing when the marathon reached its conclusion. Bazzo and Bigethi both navigated hours of play to reach that point, and the fact that two Brazilians were the ones left standing added a distinctly national flavor to the finish.
Zeeh_pb Outlasts a Countryman Heads Up
Heads up finishes between players from the same country are not unheard of in online poker, but they still stand out, particularly in a global pool the size of PokerStars during a major promotional series like the WCOOP Boot Camp. Bazzo’s run through the field culminated in a heads up battle against Bigethi that ended with zeeh_pb taking the title and the larger share of the prize pool.
For Brazilian online grinders, the result plays into a broader pattern that has been visible throughout the WCOOP Boot Camp and the wider PokerStars calendar this summer, with Brazilian screen names regularly appearing deep in leaderboards and final tables across cash game and tournament formats alike. Bazzo’s win adds another data point to that trend, and a meaningful one given the size of the field he beat to get there.
Why the Smaller Buy Ins Matter
Big money headlines tend to go to the marquee events with five and six figure buy ins, but tournaments like Event #21-L are where much of the WCOOP Boot Camp’s actual participation lives. A $109 buy in keeps the door open to a wide range of players, and a field of 1,009 entries shows just how much volume that price point can generate when paired with a guaranteed structure and a bit of marketing muscle behind the series.
That accessibility is also why stories like Bazzo’s resonate. A $15,415 score is not a career changing sum by high roller standards, but it represents a strong multiple on a $109 investment and the kind of result that keeps grinders coming back to lower and mid stakes tournament series. Players newer to multi table tournaments who want to understand how these payout ladders and heads up dynamics work can find the basics covered in our how to play poker guide.
Brazil’s Growing Footprint on the Online Grind
Brazilian players have become one of the most consistently visible groups on PokerStars over the past several tournament series, a trend driven by a large domestic player base, a strong online poker culture built around low and mid stakes multi table tournaments, and a steady pipeline of players moving from local Brazilian sites into the global player pool. An all Brazilian heads up finish in a thousand entry field is a small but concrete sign of how deep that pipeline now runs.
It also reflects well on the structure of events like Event #21-L specifically. The slower, deeper “L” format rewards patience and solid fundamentals over short stacked aggression, a style that has become something of a trademark among Brazilian online grinders who often build their games around disciplined, low variance strategies rather than high risk, high reward swings. Bazzo and Bigethi both leaned into that patience to outlast well over a thousand opponents.
A Boot Camp Built for Results Like This
The WCOOP Boot Camp exists in part to build a pipeline of players ready for the marquee WCOOP series proper, pairing coaching content with a calendar of tournaments at multiple buy in levels. Results like Bazzo’s heads up win over Bigethi are the kind of proof of concept the series is designed to produce, showing that the structure genuinely rewards players who put in volume at accessible stakes.
For Bazzo, the win adds a strong tournament score to his résumé and a boost of confidence heading into the rest of the Boot Camp calendar. For Bigethi, a runner-up finish worth $8,303 against a fellow Brazilian in a field of over a thousand is far from a bad outcome, even if the title itself slipped away in the final hand. Together, their heads up battle offered a small but telling snapshot of how deep Brazil’s online grinding talent pool has become.
