August 31, 2026
Daily Brief

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Fabiano Kovalski Won Two EPT Barcelona Titles in Three Days. The Casino Should Put His Name on a Suite.

Fabiano Kovalski of Brazil has decided one specific building in Barcelona is simply where he lives now, financially speaking. He won the EPT Barcelona €10,300 High Roller on August 29 for $843,645, his personal best, outlasting a 429-entry field and closing a heads-up deal with runner-up Igor Picone worth $691,267. That was his second title of the same series: two days earlier he'd already taken the €3,250 Mystery Bounty event for $447,099, presumably as a warm-up. He cashed for more than $1.3 million across four scores during the festival, and six of his eight largest career paydays have now come at this one casino, a loyalty rate most punch-cards can only dream of. His lifetime tournament earnings reached $4,758,530, good for Brazil's top 10 money list, and all of it strongly suggests the building itself deserves a cut.

Winning two titles at the same festival within three days is a genuinely rare outcome even at the highest level of the tour, and the fact that one casino now accounts for three quarters of a player's best-ever results says something about how concentrated modern tournament success can get. Kovalski did not just have a good week, he had the best week of his career twice, at the same address, in the same series.