Brazil came within one final table finish of adding another bracelet to its growing 2026 WSOP Online haul. On Monday, Aug. 31, Lucas Vanzella, playing under the screen name “Vandangoz,” finished third in Event #11, the $800 WSOP Asia Championship on GGPoker, banking $260,666 in a tournament that drew a staggering 35,095 total entries across its multi-day, multi-phase structure.
A monster field, whittled down over days
Event #11 is one of dozens of bracelet events GGPoker is running as part of its 2026 WSOP Online series, which the operator has built out to 33 bracelets this year. The Asia Championship format uses staggered starting flights and phases to absorb its enormous entry count before consolidating into a single Day 2. In this case, 3,443 players returned for Day 2 on Sunday, Aug. 30, out of the 35,095 total entries the event ultimately drew, a field size that puts it among the bigger bracelet events of the online series and underlines just how much volume GGPoker’s WSOP Online partnership continues to pull in from recreational and grinding players alike.
Vanzella navigated that shrinking field deep into Monday, eventually bowing out in third place as the tournament reached its final stages. He did not walk away with the bracelet, but a $260,666 min-cash for third is the kind of result that changes a year, let alone a month, for almost any online tournament specialist.
Brazil’s strong run through the WSOP Online series
Vanzella’s third-place finish was not an isolated bright spot for Brazilian players on GGPoker that weekend. The same Sunday slate that fed into Event #11’s Day 2 also produced a string of results for the country’s online grinders across the site’s parallel Sunday tournaments. Jessé César won the $1,500 Sunday Giant High Roller outright for $65,753 among 267 entries, with fellow Brazilian Luigi Soncin finishing runner-up for $50,702, a one-two finish in the same event. Gustavo Campos, playing as “Gusscamposs,” took down the $1,050 Sunday Showdown High Roller, a 516-entry Mystery Bounty event, for $64,100, while Diogo Franco busted in seventh in that same tournament but still walked away with $81,372 thanks to a string of large bounty envelopes along the way.
Further down the same weekend’s results sheet, Igor Kirch finished fourth of 3,712 entries in the $525 Sunday Mystery Bounty High Roller for $54,936, with Bruno de Souza also cashing in eighth for $28,792 in the same field. In the $365 Sunday Giant, Victor Pedote topped 1,139 entries for $47,346, with Léo Jokura finishing fourth for $23,787. Taken together, the weekend amounted to one of the deeper collective showings by Brazilian players in this year’s WSOP Online series, even without a bracelet to show for it in Event #11 specifically.
Why this WSOP Online series matters for Brazil
Brazilian players have already claimed multiple bracelets earlier in this year’s WSOP Online series on GGPoker, building a narrative around the country’s depth in mid-and-high-stakes online tournaments. A near miss like Vanzella’s third-place run adds to that storyline rather than detracting from it. In an event that drew 35,095 total entries, surviving into the final handful of players against that volume of competition is itself a demonstration of sustained skill and stamina, regardless of whether the bracelet ultimately went home with him.
The size of Event #11’s field also speaks to how far WSOP Online has scaled on GGPoker. An $800 buy-in event pulling more than 35,000 entries generates a prize pool deep enough to pay a third-place finisher over a quarter of a million dollars, numbers that would have been unthinkable for an online-only bracelet event a decade ago. That scale is part of why GGPoker’s WSOP Online partnership has become appointment viewing and appointment grinding for high-volume players around the world, Brazil included, every summer.
What a deep run like this means going forward
For Vanzella, the $260,666 score instantly ranks among the largest results of his tournament career and puts him firmly on the radar heading into whatever remains of the 2026 WSOP Online calendar. Bracelet or not, a third-place finish in a field of 35,095 is the sort of result that tends to open doors, from staking opportunities to invitations into higher buy-in fields where the reputational value of a deep WSOP Online run carries weight.
For Brazilian poker more broadly, results like this one, stacked alongside the weekend’s other Sunday cashes, continue to reinforce the country’s status as one of the strongest online tournament nations competing on GGPoker’s biggest stage. With more WSOP Online bracelet events still to be dealt this year, the question is not whether Brazilian players will contend again, but how many more near misses like Vanzella’s turn into bracelets before the series wraps.
Players looking to understand how massive multi-flight online tournaments like this one structure their payouts and survive deep into the field can find a breakdown of tournament fundamentals in Poker Pro Academy’s WSOP guidewhich covers how staggered starting days and bracelet-event formats work across both live and online WSOP series.
Poker involves real financial risk. Only play with money you can afford to lose, treat tournament buy-ins as entertainment spending rather than an investment, and reach out to resources such as the National Council on Problem Gambling if the game ever stops feeling fun. Participants must be 18 or older, or the legal age required in their jurisdiction.
