The Muck · WSOP Daily Brief
Day 87
Bracelet 102 has a name, and it took a site none of us had cited this month to publish it. Lucas Teixeira Rodrigues of Brazil won WSOP Online Event #2, the $300 Gladiators of Poker, for $579,752, making Brazil two for two in the opening two bracelet events of the GGPoker series. The field was not 13,214 as reported on Sunday. It was 17,077. Not one of the seven players on the published Day 2 chip board reached the final table, which is now the second consecutive brief in which the entire public leaderboard of a major tournament missed the money seats. Meanwhile the Atlantic City Circuit Main Event begins today at 11 a.m. with a $600,000 guarantee, WSOP.com's own instruction is to follow it on poker.org's Instant feed, and the Atlantic City feed that exists there covers August 2025.
Story 01 of 7
Lucas Teixeira Rodrigues of Brazil, playing as 'Fino y Elegante,' won WSOP Online Event #2, the $300 Gladiators of Poker on GGPoker, for $579,752 and a $30,000 Super Pass to the WSOP Paradise Super Main Event. It is the largest score of his career. He arrived at the final table with 140 big blinds and the chip lead and never gave it up. The last hand: Sunaina Bhartia of Sri Lanka moved in with queen-deuce, Teixeira called with ace-jack, board ran eight-five-eight-three-four. Bhartia had briefly seized momentum heads-up before Teixeira flopped a set to take it back. Bhartia took $446,602 for second with no deal struck. Three of the nine final-table seats were Brazilian. Here is the part that changes the record: the field was 17,077 entries and the prize pool $4,764,483, against a $3,000,000 guarantee. On Sunday, PokerNews reported the same tournament at 13,214 entrants and $3,686,706. Both figures are attributed to PokerNews. Both divide to $278.99 per entry, which is how we know this is a field that grew rather than a number that broke.
Why it mattersWe reported yesterday that nobody had published this result 36 hours after the tournament was scheduled to end. That was accurate about our sources and wrong about the world. Poker News Daily filed on August 19 at 8:04 a.m. crediting PokerNews throughout, and Spade Poker filed the same day with a full nine-place payout table crediting WSOP and BSOP. The two agree to the dollar on every payout. What they do not do is exist on PokerNews, poker.org, Card Player, pokerfuse or WSOP.com, which are the five places a person looking for WSOP results would actually look. A 17,077-entry gold bracelet event was won on Sunday night and by Wednesday the fullest account of it in English was on a Slovak-owned aggregator.
Story 02 of 7
Yesterday we ran the only chip data attached to a live WSOP bracelet event anywhere: the Gladiators Day 2 board from PokerNews. Silvio Costa 1,292,168. Bernard Larabi 1,039,246. Samuel Mullur 902,214. Pedro Neves 773,193. Peter Traply 639,614. Nevan Chang 562,509. Joe Serock 380,546. Seven names, one of them a Hungarian bracelet winner, one a former Card Player Player of the Year. The final table, as published by two outlets in identical form, reads: Teixeira, Bhartia, Barcia, Saprykin, Zhao, John, Hollanda, Mehra, Nocon. Not one of the seven is there. This is the second consecutive brief in which that has happened. On Monday, Ian O'Hara and Maria Hernandez led the Cherokee Circuit Main Event Day 2 board and neither reached the nine-handed final table, which was won from seventh in chips.
Why it mattersThis is not a scandal, it is variance, and 1,307 players returned to that Day 2 so the top seven were always long shots. But it is worth saying plainly what the reader experience is. The only chip counts published for these tournaments are snapshots taken with hundreds of players left, they are the single most repeated piece of data in poker coverage, and in the last two events we tracked they had a zero percent hit rate on predicting a final table seat. We will keep printing them, because a stale number is better than no number. We will also keep noting when they turn out to have been decorative.
Story 03 of 7
Two bracelet events have been decided in the 2026 WSOP Online series on GGPoker. Brazil has won both. Raphael Caixeta took the $700 Kick-Off on Sunday and Lucas Teixeira Rodrigues took the $300 Gladiators on Monday night. Poker News Daily, citing PokerNews, calls it a perfect start to the festival for the country. The Gladiators final table put three Brazilians in nine seats, Teixeira first, Rafael Barcia third and Luciano Hollanda seventh. Second place went to Sunaina Bhartia of Sri Lanka for $446,602, a number worth sitting with: Sri Lanka has almost no presence in WSOP record books, and the runner-up prize alone would rank among the largest recorded results ever attached to the country. Also at that table: Vladislav Saprykin of Russia fourth for $265,561, Jian Zhao of China fifth for $204,781, Kevin John of Austria sixth for $157,914, Rishi Mehra of Singapore eighth for $93,906, Michal Nocon of Poland ninth for $72,417. Nine seats, eight countries.
Why it mattersThe 2026 live series in Las Vegas produced exactly two Brazilian bracelet winners across 100 events, Yuri Dzivielevski in the $100K and Joao Simao in the $50K PLO, plus the Drumond and Lessa tag team. The online series has matched that pace in 48 hours at buy-ins of $700 and $300. That is what the international online series is for and it is doing it. The counter-note is that we can tell you the countries because Spade Poker published a flags-and-payouts table, and the outlet that actually reported the tournament has not published one that we can find.
Story 04 of 7
The $1,700 Harrah's Atlantic City WSOP Circuit Main Event begins today, Thursday August 20, Flight A at 11 a.m. EST, with Flight B Friday and Flight C Saturday, one re-entry per flight, $600,000 guaranteed. That is straight from WSOP.com's August 13 announcement. The same article closes with a section headed 'Follow Live Updates for WSOP Circuit Main Events on Poker.Org,' names poker.org as the official media partner of the WSOP Circuit for the 2026 season, and links readers to poker.org's Instant feed. We went there. The Atlantic City Instant feed at poker.org/instant/102/wsop-c-atlantic-city/ carries the meta description 'Live updates from the 2025 World Series of Poker Circuit stop at Harrah's Atlantic City,' a published date of August 14 2025, a current host credit for Jeff McMillan, and a top post dated Aug 25 reading 'Gary Martin wins The Closer for $18,298 to close out the series in Atlantic City.' Its Main Event payout table is topped by Bohdan Slyvinskyi of Ukraine for $177,562. All of it is 2025. All of it renders inside 2026 site chrome. This is the seventh legacy page we have caught at a year-free slug and the second on poker.org, after the Cherokee feed we logged on Monday.
Why it mattersRead the trap carefully, because it is the best one yet. The 2025 Atlantic City stop ran August 14 to 25. The 2026 stop runs August 13 to 24. Same property. Same month. Eighteen ring events both years. A $1,700 Main Event both years. A Double Stack Closer both years. If you land on that page today looking for the tournament starting this morning, there is nothing on it that tells you the year except a line of metadata, and everything on it looks exactly like what you came for. Bohdan Slyvinskyi is a real player who really won that Main Event for exactly $177,562, and WSOP.com's own 2026 article says so in its own copy, so the number will even survive a spot check. It is just twelve months old.
Story 05 of 7
Card Player and WSOP.com both publish a schedule for the Atlantic City stop that is happening right now. They disagree in three places. One: the Mini Main Event. WSOP.com's August 13 article calls it 'the $500 Mini Main No-Limit Hold'em tournament carrying a $300,000 guarantee' with five starting flights through August 15. Card Player's schedule for the same slot lists a $400 buy-in with a $300K guarantee. Two: the Big O event on August 19. WSOP.com says '$400 Pot-Limit Big O.' Card Player says '$400 Limit Big O $25K GTD.' Those are different games. Three: WSOP.com writes that 'players can compete in a $600 Pot-Limit Omaha event.' Card Player's eighteen-event schedule contains no $600 PLO. It has a $600 No-Limit Hold'em on August 16 and a $400 Pot-Limit Omaha today. Both schedules agree the stop has exactly 18 ring events and both agree on the August 13 to 24 dates and the $600,000 Main Event guarantee.
Why it mattersA hundred-dollar difference in a buy-in is the difference between registering and not registering for a lot of players in a $400-to-$600 room. Limit and Pot-Limit Big O are not variations on a theme, they are different tournaments with different bankroll requirements. This is the second consecutive brief in which the two most-used public sources for a single WSOP Circuit stop have published incompatible basic facts, and yesterday's version was a $239,335 gap in a prize pool. We are not adjudicating, and WSOP.com's version has the obvious authority claim since it is their tournament. We are noting that the authority version and the version most players actually read are not the same document.
Story 06 of 7
Yesterday's watchlist carried an unresolved question: whether the Atlantic City Main Event guarantee was $600,000, per WSOP.com's August 13 announcement, or $1.5 million, per FOX Sports Radio New Jersey and WJRZ in July. Three independent renderings now say $600,000. WSOP.com's article body says it. WSOP.com's own meta description says it. Card Player's tournament schedule lists the August 20 event as '$1,700 No-Limit Hold'em $600K GTD.' For scale, the 2025 edition of this Main Event paid $177,562 for first, so a $600,000 guarantee is a serious number for the room and a $1.5 million one would have been a different tournament entirely.
Why it mattersClosing an open item is the whole job, so: closed. The lesson is not that a radio station got it wrong, it is that a July promotional figure and an August operational figure diverged by nine hundred thousand dollars and nobody published a correction in between. Anyone who booked travel off the summer number is arriving today to a tournament less than half the size they were sold. We are marking this resolved in favor of $600,000 on weight of evidence, not because we watched the guarantee get changed.
Story 07 of 7
The Atlantic City stop opened on August 13. By the close of play yesterday, nine of its eighteen ring events had started and most had finished: the $400 opener, the Mini Main, a Turbo, a Seniors, a $600 NLH, the Monster Stack, a $400 NLH, an $1,100 NLH and a Big O. We can name none of the champions from any page carrying a 2026 byline. Card Player's schedule page for the stop lists all eighteen events, and the Coverage column is blank for every one. WSOP.com has published nothing about Atlantic City since the August 13 preview, seven days ago. Its news index shows exactly three items in the last week. Poker.org, the official media partner, has an Atlantic City feed and it is last year's. Compare the number this stop is about to be measured against: the last Atlantic City Circuit Main Event paid Bohdan Slyvinskyi $177,562 and, per WSOP.com's own 2026 copy, was the first of two rings he now holds.
Why it mattersCherokee's eighteen ring winners were eventually published, all at once, twelve days late, appended to somebody else's story. Atlantic City is running the same play. There is one difference worth watching. Cherokee had a Card Player reporter file a full account of the Main Event, hand histories and all. Atlantic City's Main Event begins in a few hours and the only outlet officially assigned to cover it is pointing at a feed from 2025. If a name appears on that feed in the next 48 hours, we will need to check its year before we print it, which is a sentence that should not need writing about a tournament happening today.
Bracelet 102 of the 2026 calendar year is Lucas Teixeira Rodrigues of Brazil, WSOP Online Event #2, the $300 Gladiators of Poker on GGPoker, 17,077 entries, $4,764,483 prize pool, $579,752 and a $30,000 WSOP Paradise Super Pass. First bracelet, career-best score. Confirmed by Poker News Daily and Spade Poker on August 19, both citing PokerNews, with identical nine-place payout ladders. Note the field revision: PokerNews reported 13,214 entries and a $3,686,706 pool on August 17 and 17,077 entries and $4,764,483 in the final report. Both figures divide to $278.99 per entry. Brazil now holds both bracelets awarded in this series. Bracelet 103 is in progress and unpublished: Event #3, the $2,500 Bounty NLH Championship, 781 entries, was down to 20 players with Arsenii Karmatckii leading on 4,754,718 chips and $19,640 in bounties when play resumed at 7:00 p.m. BST on August 19. No winner has been published as of filing. 31 online bracelets remain through September 29, culminating in a $25,000,000 guaranteed Online Main Event on September 21. Las Vegas closed at 100 of 100 on August 5. Paradise runs December 3 to 17 at Baha Mar with 20 more, for a 2026 calendar-year total of 153. On the Circuit: Cherokee is finished and fully reported, all eighteen ring winners published August 18. Atlantic City is eight days in with zero individually named 2026 ring winners we could verify, and its $1,700 Main Event Flight A starts today at 11 a.m. EST with a $600,000 guarantee. The twelve-ring WSOP Circuit Online series on WSOP.com closed August 17 with zero published winners. Next up: WSOP Super Circuit Canada at Playground, August 26 to September 12, more than CAD $14 million in guarantees.
Brazil, playing as 'Fino y Elegante.' First bracelet and career-best score. 17,077 entries, $4,764,483 prize pool against a $3M guarantee. Led the final table wire to wire from 140 big blinds. Closed it with ace-jack against Sunaina Bhartia's queen-deuce on an eight-five-eight-three-four board. Plus a $30,000 WSOP Paradise Super Main Event pass. Result published roughly 42 hours after the tournament ended, and not by any of the five outlets we check first.
Brazil. First bracelet. 3,607 entries. $126,912 placement plus $80,255 in bounties, plus a $30,000 WSOP Paradise Super Main Event package.
One live WSOP-branded chip count exists anywhere today and it is a single number. WSOP Online Event #3, the $2,500 Bounty NLH Championship, drew 781 entries and was down to 20 players when Poker News Daily filed on August 19, citing PokerNews. Arsenii Karmatckii of Russia held the lead on 4,754,718 chips with $19,640 in bounties collected, playing for a $127,888 first prize, with play scheduled to resume at 7:00 p.m. BST on August 19. That was roughly 20 hours before filing and no result has been published. No other stack in that tournament was named. The Atlantic City Circuit Main Event Flight A does not begin until 11 a.m. EST today, so there is no bag to report and, given the coverage picture described in story 7, no guarantee there will be one tonight. Yesterday's Gladiators board is now void: see story 2 for why none of those seven names appear anywhere in the results.
The full final table of a 17,077-entry gold bracelet event, published in identical form by two outlets and by neither of the two that we would normally cite. Payouts below match to the dollar between Poker News Daily, which credits PokerNews, and Spade Poker, which credits WSOP and BSOP. Countries come from Spade Poker's table. Nine seats, eight countries, three Brazilians. Reminder that not one of these names appeared on the Day 2 chip board this brief published yesterday.
Sri Lanka. No deal was struck heads-up. Briefly took the momentum back from Teixeira before he flopped a set to reclaim the lead, then got queen-deuce in against ace-jack. The largest result we can find attached to Sri Lanka at a WSOP event, and a runner-up finish out of 17,077 entries for a $300 buy-in.
Brazil. Started the final table third in chips with 52 big blinds. One of three Brazilians in the last nine.
Russia. Started the final table second in chips with 77 big blinds and finished fourth. The two players who began that table behind Teixeira went out fourth and third.
China. Fifth place in this event paid more than sixteen of the eighteen Cherokee Circuit ring winners collected for winning outright.
Austria.
Brazil. The third Brazilian at the table.
Singapore.
Poland. Ninth place from a $300 buy-in returned 241 times the entry fee. Rendered as 'Michal Nocon' here; Spade Poker prints it with a Polish diacritic.
Won WSOP Online Event #2 for $579,752 from a 17,077-entry field. Third consecutive brief in which a new bracelet winner arrives with no published WSOP POY point value, because no POY values for the 33-event online series have surfaced anywhere. If online bracelets carry points, this is a significant leaderboard event. If they do not, a man just beat seventeen thousand people for nothing on the board.
Event #1 winner, $207,167. Together with Teixeira he has Brazil at two bracelets from two events and at the top of the series promotional leaderboard, per poker.org.
Last verified figure 3,410 points, 22 clear of Naoya Kihara on 3,388 with Alex Foxen third on 3,381 after the Las Vegas leg. Fifteen days since the Main Event finished and we still cannot confirm official WSOP POY points from it have posted. Eleventh consecutive brief flagging this. The title is not decided until WSOP Paradise ends in December.
3,388 points, two bracelets this summer in four days, the $10K 2-7 Championship and the $10K Stud Championship. Closest challenger to Deeb on the last verified board and the player with the most obvious path if the online series turns out to award POY points.
No movement. Still the outright Card Player POY leader as confirmed on August 13, five titles across twelve final tables in 2026, and the ninth member of Card Player's $60 million club at $61,071,703 career. Last verified point total remains 7,109.
No tournament activity in our sources since August 5. Fifteen days a world champion, zero published appearances since.