Stefan Schillhabel added a second World Series of Poker bracelet to his resume on August 23, 2026, topping a monster field of 7,277 entries in Event #5: $100 Flip & Go on GGPoker to bank $150,740 and a $30,000 Super Pass into the 2026 WSOP Paradise Main Event. The bigger story for fans in Brazil, though, unfolded right behind him, where Neville Costa and Patrick Ulysséa both battled deep into the field to fill out the final table, with Costa falling just short in a runner-up finish worth $118,153.
The $100 buy-in event built a $1,195,005 prize pool, a reminder of how much volume the WSOP Online bracelet series continues to attract even at bargain-bin price points. For a $100 investment, thousands of players around the world got a shot at a bracelet, a career-changing payday, and a direct route into one of the richest live festivals on the calendar this December in the Bahamas.
How the Flip & Go Format Works
Flip & Go is one of the more unusual formats on the WSOP Online bracelet schedule. Every player who registers is dealt straight into an all-in “flip” stage, where advancement to the main tournament is decided purely by the cards, with no decisions to make and no skill involved. Once a player survives the flips, they move into a standard No-Limit Hold’em tournament seeded with the chips they accumulated during the flip stage, and from that point on the event plays out like any other multi-table tournament, rewarding patience, aggression, and standard tournament strategy all the way to the final table.
The format’s appeal is obvious. A $100 buy-in event can draw a field the size of a small city precisely because the entry cost of variance is baked in early, and by the time the “real” tournament starts, the remaining field already has a story to tell about how they survived the flips. With 7,277 entries, this year’s renewal was comfortably one of the bigger turnouts on the online bracelet calendar.
Brazil’s Near Miss at the Final Table
Neville Costa, a Brazilian player based in Florianopolis who turned pro after years of grinding home games and local poker clubs, could not quite complete the job in heads-up play, but a $118,153 runner-up score is a career highlight by any measure. Costa’s deepest previous WSOP result came in the 2020 WSOP Online Millionaire Maker, where he finished sixth for $288,356, and he has also posted a live cash dating back to a 47th-place finish in the 2014 WSOP Monsterstack event. Combined with this new score, Costa’s résumé now includes two deep WSOP runs a decade apart, a testament to the staying power required to keep showing up at the tables.
Right behind him, compatriot Patrick Ulysséa took third place for $92,643, giving Brazil two of the top three finishers in a bracelet event that drew players from all over the world. Two Brazilians reaching the final three of a 7,277-entry field is a strong showing by any measure, and it continues a pattern seen throughout the 2026 WSOP Online series, where Brazilian players have repeatedly punched above their weight relative to the size of the country’s dedicated online grinding population. Fourth place went to David Mzareulov of Mexico for $72,642, rounding out a final table that spanned three continents.
Schillhabel’s Second Bracelet, Four Years in the Making
For Schillhabel, the win closes the loop on a run that started back in August 2022, when he claimed his first WSOP bracelet in The Housewarming Online, a $500 No-Limit Hold’em event that drew 5,099 entries and built a prize pool north of $2.4 million. Schillhabel outlasted that field to beat Roman Kropmanns heads-up for $296,410, becoming the first champion crowned in that year’s 33-event WSOP Online series. Four years later, he has done it again, this time in a wildly different format and at a fraction of the buy-in, which speaks to a level of adaptability that separates career tournament grinders from one-hit wonders.
Schillhabel is a veteran of the high-stakes tournament scene with career earnings well north of $10 million, including a World Poker Tour Main Event title dating back to 2016. Adding a second WSOP bracelet, especially one earned entirely online against a field in the thousands, cements his place among a select group of players who have built multiple bracelet victories through the WSOP’s growing online calendar rather than exclusively at the felt in Las Vegas.
What It Means for the Rest of the Series
Event #5 is just one stop on a packed 2026 WSOP Online calendar that continues to run alongside preparations for WSOP Paradise this December, and the Super Pass attached to the $100 Flip & Go win is a small but meaningful example of how the online series now feeds directly into the live festival circuit. Players who might never have budgeted for a $10,000-plus buy-in can win their way into the Bahamas through a $100 online event, and results like Costa’s and Ulysséa’s show that the ceiling for Brazilian players in these fields keeps climbing. Readers looking to understand how bracelet events like this one are structured, including blind levels, payout jumps, and late-stage strategy, can find a deeper breakdown in our WSOP guide.
With Costa and Ulysséa both banking six-figure and five-figure scores respectively, and with the WSOP Online series still running, Brazilian players will have plenty more chances to convert a deep run into a bracelet before the calendar turns to Paradise. For now, Schillhabel walks away with the hardware, but the final table he beat to get there did plenty to remind the poker world that Brazil’s online talent pool is only getting deeper.
