The Muck · WSOP Daily Brief
Day 101 - The Retraction Edition
We have been wrong about the biggest thing we have been saying. For fifteen consecutive days this brief has reported that no GGPoker WSOP Online bracelet had been published anywhere since Event #2 on August 18. We listed it in the missing column. We built a thesis on it. It was not true. PokerNews has covered every single one of them, in named dispatches with full final tables, and the series is now through Event #13. Benjamin Rolle won the $1,500 Millionaire Maker on September 1 for $1,366,929, an event we listed yesterday as unresolved. Antonio Galiana took his third bracelet. Santiago Plante took his first. A Belarusian screen name won a 35,095-entry Asia Championship. Nikita Kalinin, Daniel Vicente, Stefan Schillhabel, Arthur Thiriart and Ilia Arkhipov all won bracelets between August 20 and August 27, and PokerNews filed on all five while we were writing that nobody had. The bracelets were never missing. We were reading WSOP.com and Poker.Org's reference page, finding nothing, and reporting the absence as fact instead of reporting that we could not find it. That is the whole error and it is ours. What follows is the material we should have had, plus the one thing this mess actually bought us: five published prize pools that let us check GGPoker's rake without asking anyone.
Story 01 of 6
PokerNews has filed named coverage of every GGPoker WSOP Online bracelet event of 2026, with full final tables, prize pools and field sizes. The series is now numbered through Event #13. Nikita Kalinin won a bracelet and $276,239 on August 20. Daniel Vicente won his first on August 22. Stefan Schillhabel took his second on August 24. Arthur Thiriart recorded a career-best score and his first bracelet on August 25. The Mini Main Event paid its champion $750,000 on August 26. Ilia Arkhipov beat a star-studded final table for his first bracelet on August 27. On September 1, PokerNews published Events #9, #10 and #11 in one dispatch: Antonio Galiana, Roland Rokita and a Belarusian playing as Fartu_Masti_Bro. On September 2 it published Events #12 and #13: Benjamin Rolle and Santiago Plante. Every one of these carries a byline, a photograph and a nine-place payout table. Meanwhile WSOP.com's news index, checked again today, still contains zero WSOP Online coverage of any kind, and Poker.Org's master list still ends at Event #100.
Why it mattersThe claim we made was that these results were not published anywhere. The claim we could actually support was that they were not published on WSOP.com or on Poker.Org's reference page. Those are different sentences and we kept writing the first one. It is a specific failure mode and worth naming: we checked the sources that fit the thesis, found the silence we expected, and promoted a search failure into a finding. The underlying observation survives, narrowly. It is still strange that the WSOP's own website has not acknowledged a 33-bracelet series carrying its own name, and it is still strange that the Circuit's official media partner has a numbered bracelet list that stops two weeks short. But the record is not broken. The record is at PokerNews, it is thorough, and Matthew Pitt has been filing it the entire time we were saying nobody was. We owe him the correction more than we owe it to anyone.
Story 02 of 6
Rolle won the $1,500 Millionaire Maker at GGPoker on the night of September 1, taking $1,366,929 and his second WSOP bracelet from a field of 5,518 entries and a $7,863,150 prize pool. He arrived at the final table with 127 big blinds, nearly double the next stack, and closed it out. Three-handed play was all Austrian: Rolle, Adrian Strobel and Loris Gauthier. Strobel went out third for $697,152. Rolle and Gauthier then played heads-up for a gap of $390,774 with no deal struck. Ilsu Lim of Thailand started the final day last in chips with 18 big blinds and laddered to fourth for $497,905. Rolle, who founded the training site Raise Your Edge, won the 2025 WSOP Online Main Event for $3,907,707 and his first bracelet. On the same night, Santiago Plante of Canada won the $2,500 Turbo NLH Championship for $234,332 and his first bracelet, beating Pakistan's Kiyopon113 heads-up out of 719 entries and a $1,707,625 pool.
Why it mattersYesterday this brief listed the Millionaire Maker in its missing column, described it as scheduled to resolve on August 31 with a million guaranteed to first, and noted no champion had been published. The champion had been published. The final table chip counts had been published the day before that, with big blind counts for all nine players. This is the single most expensive thing we got wrong, because a $1,366,929 first prize in a 5,518-entry field is not a footnote, it is the largest online result of the series so far and the second seven-figure online score of Rolle's career. Two notes on the record while we are being careful about it. PokerNews states Rolle finished eighth in the WSOP Online Main Event in 2004 for $661,848, which cannot be right, since online bracelets did not exist until 2020; the intended year is almost certainly 2024. And the heads-up gap deserves its own line: $390,774 with no deal, in a field where the ninth-place finisher took $92,590. Two Austrians looked at that number and played it out.
Story 03 of 6
Five WSOP Online prize pools were published with their field sizes in the last two days, which is enough to do arithmetic. The $600 Super Six Bounty drew 2,699 entries and returned $1,538,430, which is 95.00 percent of $1,619,400. The $1,000 Five Card PLO drew 755 and returned $717,250 of $755,000, which is 95.00 percent. The $1,500 Millionaire Maker drew 5,518 and returned $7,863,150 of $8,277,000, which is 95.00 percent. The $2,500 Turbo NLH Championship drew 719 and returned $1,707,625 of $1,797,500, which is 95.00 percent. Then the outlier. The 800 yuan WSOP Asia Championship drew 35,095 entrants across several starting flights and returned a pool of 25,829,920 yuan against 28,076,000 in face value, which is 92.00 percent. Not 91.98 or 92.03. Exactly 92.00, the same way the other four are exactly 95.00.
Why it mattersThe four matching numbers turn something we have been calling a pattern into something closer to a published rate, which is useful, because GGPoker still does not publish a rate. Any player who wants to know what a WSOP Online bracelet event costs can now assume five percent and be right four times out of five. The fifth time is the interesting one. An exactly three-point spread on the one event denominated in yuan, run across multiple flights and aimed at a different market, is too clean to be a rounding artifact and too specific to guess at. It could be a currency conversion applied at the pool level, a different fee schedule for the Asia series, a re-entry counting convention, or a straightforward higher rake on the cheapest event of the series. We do not know, and neither does anyone reading, because the number exists only as the quotient of two figures printed in a results table. We are not calling it anything until somebody explains it. We are just noting that the one field with 35,095 people in it is also the one paying three points more.
Story 04 of 6
PokerNews published the Millionaire Maker payout ladder on September 1, before the final table played, listing ninth place at $92,950. It published the finished results on September 2, listing Marcel Kessler ninth at $92,590. The September 2 article then uses both figures in its own body copy, describing Kessler's exit as worth $92,590 and, four paragraphs later, describing what Ilsu Lim would otherwise have taken home as $92,950. This one is resolvable without asking anybody. The nine published payouts sum to $4,551,363 only if ninth place is $92,590, and $4,551,363 is the exact figure PokerNews gave for the money remaining at the final table. So $92,590 is correct and $92,950 is a transposition. Separately, the same outlet lists Galiana as Spain's Antonio Galiana in its copy and Andorra in its table, and spells Andrij Lyubovetskiy in one place and Andriy Lyubovetskiy in another.
Why it mattersWe flagged an official misprint yesterday and it would be dishonest to let this one go because it turned up somewhere friendlier. The difference is that PokerNews shows enough working for a reader to fix it themselves, and it prints the disclaimer that makes the Galiana discrepancy explicable rather than mysterious: countries are shown as they appear in the GGPoker lobby, which is a statement about GGPoker's data and not PokerNews's. That is the standard. Print the field size, print the pool, print all nine payouts, and say where the metadata came from. A reader with a calculator can then audit you, which is exactly what just happened, and the audit came out in your favour on the number that mattered. A $360 typo in a $7.8 million tournament is nothing. The reason it is in this brief at all is that we can prove which figure is right, and two days ago we could not prove anything about this event because we had not found it.
Story 05 of 6
The 800 yuan WSOP Asia Championship drew 35,095 entrants across several starting flights, building a 25,829,920 yuan prize pool worth roughly $3.8 million. The winner, listed only as Fartu_Masti_Bro of Belarus, beat Pavel Ignatov heads-up for 2,952,453 yuan, approximately $440,000, a gold WSOP bracelet and a $30,000 Super Pass to the WSOP Paradise Super Main Event in December. Gilles Simon, the 2023 EPT Cyprus champion, made the final table and busted eighth for 478,142 yuan. Of the nine finalists, five are listed under handles rather than names: Fartu_Masti_Bro, Vandangoz, Dankus_memecus, wwwwying, langyue_M, marecosta23 and Vasil Neo1. Every 2026 WSOP Online bracelet winner receives the same $30,000 Super Pass, per both PokerNews and Pokerfuse.
Why it mattersThis is the largest field anyone has played in for a WSOP bracelet this year outside the Las Vegas Mystery Millions, and its champion is a string of characters. That is not a complaint, it is just the shape of the thing: a bracelet, the WSOP's most jealously guarded piece of branding, was won by a player whose name the WSOP does not publish and possibly does not intend to. Compare it to the other end of the same organisation, where Teresa Lammie's $300 ring win at Tunica is attached to a legal name, a photograph and a press release. The online series awards more hardware to more people for more money and records less about who they are. When somebody eventually asks how many bracelets exist and who holds them, the Asia Championship is the row that breaks the spreadsheet. Also worth noting for the tally-keepers: this is the field size that makes the 92 percent return in story three a live question rather than a curiosity, because eight percent of 28 million yuan is real money.
Story 06 of 6
Pokerfuse published a count on August 31 that puts 2026 at 135 live bracelets and 63 online, for 198 total, against 235 in 2025 and 245 in 2024. The online figure is 30 awarded to US players over the summer plus the 33 currently running on GGPoker. What is missing is the Ontario online bracelet series, which has run alongside the international series in previous years and has not been announced at all this year. Pokerfuse asked GGPoker directly and was told that bracelets 'may return for Ontario players in the future' and that 'there has been no definite decision taken either way.' A US fall series, usually announced in mid-September, could add roughly 33 more and an Ontario return roughly eight, which would land 2026 at 104 online, identical to 2025. The same piece traces the arc: nine online bracelets in 2019, 85 in 2020, 110 in 2022, a peak of 115 in 2024, then 104 and a plateau.
Why it mattersThe interesting number in that table is not the peak, it is 2021, when the WSOP awarded 104 live bracelets and 85 online in the same calendar year and nobody had a framework for what that meant. Five years later the online supply has stopped climbing, and the reason given is administrative rather than philosophical: Pennsylvania joining the shared pool removed the need for separate events, and Ontario has simply not been scheduled. Which is to say the prestige debate everyone keeps having has been settled by liquidity agreements and provincial regulators rather than by anybody deciding what a bracelet is worth. Pokerfuse makes the point that ends the argument cleanly: if Hellmuth won an online bracelet tomorrow he would have 18, not 17 and an asterisk. The hardware itself is stamped to show it was won online. Everything else is a conversation the WSOP has never had out loud, and now does not need to, because the numbers stopped going up on their own.
The running 2026 total this brief has been carrying was built on an undercount and we are rebuilding it rather than restating it. What is verifiable today: GGPoker's WSOP Online series has awarded and published thirteen bracelets, numbered by PokerNews through Event #13, out of 33 scheduled through September 29. Pokerfuse counts 135 live bracelets for 2026 and 63 online including the 30 awarded to US players over the summer. Listed below are the five champions published in the last two days, all bracelets, all online, plus the Millionaire Maker result that resolves an event we wrongly listed as missing yesterday. Every one receives a $30,000 Super Pass to the WSOP Paradise Super Main Event in December.
Austria. Second bracelet, after winning the 2025 WSOP Online Main Event for $3,907,707. Founder of the training site Raise Your Edge. 5,518 entries, $7,863,150 prize pool, exactly 95.00 percent returned. Led the final table with 127 big blinds. Beat Loris Gauthier heads-up with no deal across a $390,774 gap. Largest published online result of the 2026 series.
Belarus, listed by screen name only. 35,095 entrants across several starting flights, the largest published field of the series, building a 25,829,920 yuan pool worth roughly $3.8 million. Beat Pavel Ignatov heads-up. This pool returned exactly 92.00 percent of face value against 95.00 percent in the four other events published this week, which nobody has explained.
Third bracelet. First came in the 2024 $2,500 NLH Freezeout in Las Vegas for $439,395, second in the 2025 $5,000 NLH 8-Max for $582,008. Topped 2,699 entries and a $1,538,430 pool, taking roughly ten percent of it. Beat Jonatas Gomes of Brazil heads-up. Listed as Spain in PokerNews copy and Andorra in its table, which the article footnotes as the country shown in the GGPoker lobby.
Austria. Second bracelet, after the 2024 Online Event #14 $5,300 NLH High Roller 8-Max, a hybrid whose final table played live in Las Vegas, worth $278,713. 755 entries, $717,250 pool, exactly 95.00 percent returned. Beat B0rnToT1lt of Ukraine heads-up after Pedro Neves went out third.
Canada. First bracelet. 719 entries, $1,707,625 pool, exactly 95.00 percent returned. Beat Kiyopon113 of Pakistan heads-up. Final table included Ziqian Wang, who had finished fourth in the Mini Main Event, out in sixth for $69,445.
First real chip board this brief has been able to carry since August 19, and it existed the whole time. PokerNews published the nine-handed Millionaire Maker final table counts on September 1 with big blind figures for every player, and we reported that day that no chip counts had been published anywhere. These are the counts as they stood when play began; the event has since finished, with Rolle winning and Gauthier taking second. Carried here as the record we failed to carry at the time.
Final table exits from the two events resolved on September 1, both published by PokerNews on September 2. The Millionaire Maker ladder is unusually steep: eight of nine finishers took six figures, and the gap between first and second alone was $390,774.
Third in chips coming back with 44 big blinds, ran it to heads-up against Rolle and lost. No deal was struck across a $390,774 gap, which is roughly what the fourth and fifth place finishers took home combined.
Second in chips at the restart. His exit ended an all-Austrian three-handed table and left two more Austrians to play it out.
Started the final day ninth of nine with 18 big blinds and finished fourth. Turned a $92,590 outcome into a $497,905 one without ever holding the chip lead.
First out. The only finalist not to take six figures, and the subject of the $92,590 versus $92,950 discrepancy in story four. The payout table's own $4,551,363 total confirms $92,590.
Pakistan, listed by screen name. Lost heads-up to Santiago Plante for a $50,596 difference, the narrowest first-to-second gap of any event published this week.
Playing as Lucky__Bear. Had finished fourth in the Mini Main Event days earlier. Two deep runs in the series, no bracelet.
The 2023 EPT Cyprus champion, and one of only two named players at a nine-handed final table where five finishers are listed by handle.
Brazil. Lost heads-up to Antonio Galiana. Collected $23,104 in bounties against Galiana's $69,972, which is most of what separated them.
Second WSOP title in thirteen months, both online, both seven figures. No published Player of the Year movement for him anywhere, which is its own question: neither Card Player nor the WSOP has said publicly whether online bracelet events score in their 2026 races. We are not going to guess.
Bracelets in 2024 and 2025 came from $2,500 and $5,000 events in Las Vegas. The third came from a $600 online bounty tournament. Same hardware, three very different rooms, and no public accounting of how any of it scores.
Carried, unchanged. Still no published movement. The WSOP's own $1 million POY race resumes at Paradise in December.
Carried. Nothing published on his position since the summer ended.