Kaio Camargo Carvalho is the new champion of the BSOP Floripa Main Event, closing out a homecoming festival for the Campeonato Brasileiro de Poker with a five-way deal that turned a satellite ticket into the biggest score of his career.
A Homecoming BSOP Floripa Main Event
BSOP Floripa marked the tour’s long-awaited return to Florianopolis after an eight-year absence, and organizers built a 26-event schedule at Costao do Santinho to celebrate the comeback. The R$4,000 Main Event served as the centerpiece of the series, drawing satellite winners and direct entrants from across Brazil and neighboring countries for a week of poker that also included the R$147,400 High Roller won earlier in the festival by Eduardo Viana. With the tour skipping the city since its last visit, local players treated the Main Event as a genuine hometown celebration, and Camargo, a Florianopolis native, made sure the trophy stayed close to home.
Camargo’s Road Through a PokerStars Satellite
Like a growing share of the BSOP’s champions in recent seasons, Camargo did not pay the full R$4,000 buy-in out of pocket. He won his seat through a PokerStars satellite that cost just US$215 and included both tournament entry and resort accommodation for the week, a package designed to make the live festival accessible to online grinders who might otherwise never sit at a major final table. Runner-up Gustavo Reinert Nicoletti followed a similar path, booking his spot through an even cheaper US$109 satellite before running deep into the money. The result is a reminder of how central online qualifiers have become to Brazilian live poker, turning modest online buy-ins into life-changing scores at marquee tour stops.
For players still building the fundamentals needed to compete in fields like this one, a refresher on how to play poker is always worth revisiting before jumping into a satellite grind, since even small technical edges compound over hundreds of qualifying attempts.
Inside the Final Table Deal
The BSOP Floripa Main Event final table narrowed quickly, and once the field reached five players, the remaining contenders opted to lock up a deal rather than gamble everything on the remaining hands. Under the agreement, Camargo took home R$379,000 as the recognized champion, while Nicoletti secured R$249,000 for his runner-up finish. Tiago De Boni Dutra collected R$251,000, Ulises Manuel Acosta of Argentina banked R$206,000, and Charles Alberto Poltronieri rounded out the negotiated payouts with R$224,000. Because ICM-based deals are built around each player’s chip stack at the moment of the agreement rather than final finishing order, it is not unusual for a player who eventually busts in third or fourth to walk away with slightly more than a player who outlasts them, exactly what happened between Nicoletti and De Boni Dutra.
Beyond the top five, the remaining spots were paid out in full: Anis Homaidan Neto took sixth for R$88,000, Michel Balazs finished seventh for R$66,000, Uruguay’s Federico Lanza busted in eighth for R$50,000, and Naiquel Santos De Oliveira rounded out the unofficial final table in ninth for R$38,800. The international flavor at the top, with players from Argentina and Uruguay reaching the final table alongside the Brazilian majority, underscored how far BSOP’s reputation has traveled across South America since the tour began expanding its regional footprint.
A Festival Full of Storylines
Camargo’s win was only one chapter of a BSOP Floripa festival that delivered stories from start to finish. Eduardo Viana’s High Roller victory for R$147,400 came just days before the Main Event wrapped, giving the stop two marquee Brazilian winners in the same week. Combined with the tour’s eight-year absence from the city, the festival carried extra weight for the local poker community, many of whom grew up following BSOP results without ever getting the chance to play a flagship event in their own city.
The turnout and storylines at Floripa also arrive at a moment of broader momentum for the BSOP calendar, with the tour already promoting a record US$4 million guarantee for BSOP Millions in Sao Paulo later this year. That kind of scheduling, anchoring a historic regional return in Florianopolis while building toward one of the largest guarantees in tour history, shows how aggressively BSOP is expanding both its geographic reach and its headline numbers heading into the next stretch of the 2026 season.
What Comes Next for BSOP
For Camargo, the BSOP Floripa Main Event title caps a run that began with a modest online satellite investment and ended with a six-figure real-money score and a trophy in his home city, precisely the kind of story the tour likes to promote when selling the value of its online qualifying partnerships. For the wider Brazilian scene, the result adds another homegrown champion to a season that has already produced deep runs and bracelets on the international stage, reinforcing Brazil’s status as one of the fastest-growing poker markets in the world.
With BSOP Millions on the horizon in Sao Paulo and more festival stops expected before the year is out, players who missed their shot in Floripa will have fresh opportunities to chase a similar story. As always, tournament poker rewards patience and preparation as much as raw card luck, and the deep satellite fields feeding into these Main Events show no signs of slowing down.
Poker should always be enjoyed as entertainment rather than a source of guaranteed income, and players are encouraged to set firm bankroll limits before entering any tournament or satellite. This content is intended for readers of legal gambling age (18 or older, depending on jurisdiction).
