Career-Best Score For Kovalski as he Captures EPT Barcelona High Roller Title

Some poker players can go their entire careers without tasting victory. Fabiano Kovalski is not just some poker player. The Brazilian ace walked away with €385,430 and the €3,250 Mystery Bounty title at the 2026 European Poker Tour (EPT) Barcelona festival. Two days later, Kovalski won the €10,300 High Roller and another €727,280.

Kovalski’s impressive victory pushed his recorded lifetime earnings from live poker tournaments over the $4 million mark. The bankroll-boosting sum also propelled Kovalski to within touching distance of Brazil’s all-time money listing top 10; he is essentially one cash away from leapfrogging Andre Akkari in tenth.

€10,300 EPT Barcelona High Roller Final Table Results

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Including re-entries, the €10,300 No-Limit Hold’em High Roller drew in 429 entries. The prize pool reached €4,161,300, with the top 64 finishers taking home a slice. Household names such as Nacho Barbero, Chris Hunichen, Davidi Kitai, Joni Jouhkimainen, Brandon Sheils, Felipe Boianovsky, Jason Wheeler, Brock Wilson, and final table bubble boy Aram Zobian were among the in-the-money finishers.

Denmark’s Fehim Hajdari‘s time at the nine-handed final table was short-lived, as he exited in ninth place for €86,900.

Leo Worthington-Leese was the next to fall. The 2024 EPT Cyprus Eureka Main Event champion collected €104,300, the third-largest live score of the British grinder’s career.

Seventh place and €127,200 went to Italian Paolo Boi. If Boi’s name rings a bell, it could be because he won a bracelet in the $3,000 No-Limit Hold’em event at the 2024 World Series of Poker (WSOP), and finished third in this very tournament last year.

Frenchman Alexandre Reard came unstuck in sixth, a finish good for €165,400. Reard recently broke through $10 million in live earnings and now occupies fourth place in France’s all-time money list.

The next two players who headed to the cashier’s desk hailed from Finland, a country poker fans typically associate with Pot-Limit Omaha, not necessarily No-Limit Hold’em. Kalle Parkkinen‘s fifth-place finish came with a career-best €215,000, while the €279,400 that Tommi Lankinen banked for his fourth-place finish was also his largest haul and his second six-figure prize of the 2026 EPT Barcelona stop.

The €10,300 High Roller advanced to heads-up when Lithuania’s Gediminas Uselis ran out of steam. Uselis turned his €10,300 investment into €363,400, a prize only bettered by the $778,490 he collected in 2021 when he took down the $3,500 EPT Rock ‘N’ Roll Poker Open Main Event.

Kovalski and Belgium’s Igor Picone faced off heads-up, but not before agreeing to a deal that reduced the gap in the original payouts. The deal meant Picone received €595,920 instead of €508,700 when he finished second, while Kovalski received €727,280 instead of the scheduled €814,500. Those monster-sized prizes represent career highs for both Picone and Kovalski.

Matthew Pitt hails from Leeds, West Yorkshire, in the United Kingdom, and has worked in the poker industry since 2008, and worked for PokerNews since 2010. In September 2010, he became the editor of PokerNews. Matthew stepped away from live reporting duties in 2015, and now concentrates on his role of Senior Editor for the PokerNews.