Alessio La Francesca has won his first WSOP bracelet, taking down Event #21: $1,500 GGMasters Freezeout Championship on GGPoker for $316,037 plus a $30,000 Super Pass into the 2026 WSOP Paradise Super Main Event and its $50 million guarantee.
The Italian, based in Albania and listed under that flag in the GGPoker lobby, beat a field of 1,514 entrants in a freezeout — no re-entries, no rebuys, one bullet each.
Twelve months in the making
La Francesca's previous closest brush with gold came almost exactly a year earlier. In September 2025 he reached the final two tables of the €2,000 NLH Monsterstack at WSOP Europe in Rozvadov, finishing 11th. Twelve months later he converted.
Day 2 began with 46 players remaining. Austria's "Jokee90" burst the final-table bubble, and the nine who made it represented an unusually international spread.
Final table payouts
| Place | Player | Country | Prize |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Alessio La Francesca | Albania | $316,037 |
| 2 | Elias Suhonen | Finland | $243,696 |
| 3 | Patrick Brooks | Mexico | $187,915 |
| 4 | Marty "dadneedsit" Mathis | Mexico | $144,092 |
| 5 | Vinicius "DaddysRun" Escossi | Brazil | $111,735 |
| 6 | Artur Berg | Brazil | $86,159 |
| 7 | Gustavo Pinto | Brazil | $66,438 |
| 8 | Anton Silyavko | Andorra | $51,231 |
| 9 | Gwn Accepteren | Netherlands | $39,504 |
Countries are as displayed in the GGPoker lobby, which reflects where players are based rather than nationality — Patrick Brooks is a British grinder residing in Mexico, and La Francesca is Italian.
The ninth-place finisher deserves a mention for the screen name alone: "Gwn Accepteren" translates from Dutch as "Just Accept It." He busted first at the final table.
Runner-up Elias Suhonen arrived in form, having recently won a €10,200 High Roller at EPT Barcelona 2026. A $243,696 consolation prize is a reasonable outcome for a second-place finish, but the bracelet was the thing.
The freezeout format matters here
This is worth dwelling on. The GGMasters Freezeout Championship is a freezeout in a bracelet schedule dominated by re-entry events. That single structural choice changes the tournament substantially.
In a multi-entry event, well-bankrolled players can fire several bullets, which flattens the variance for them and effectively raises the cost of competing. In a freezeout, everyone has one stack and one tournament life. Early aggression carries real cost, ICM pressure is present from much earlier, and the field's skill distribution flattens because the recreational player who busts is not immediately replaced by a professional's second bullet.
For players who dislike the re-entry arms race — and there are many — freezeout bracelet events are the most attractive item on the WSOP Online schedule. 1,514 entrants at $1,500 shows there is demand for them.
The Brazilian wave continues
Three of the nine finalists were Brazilian: Vinicius Escossi, Artur Berg and Gustavo Pinto. That is not an accident of this particular tournament.
Brazilian players have dominated the 2026 WSOP Online series, collecting multiple bracelets and filling final tables across the schedule. The country has developed one of the most productive online poker populations in the world over the past decade, built on a large domestic player base, an established coaching and staking infrastructure, and a culture around online MTTs that has few equivalents outside Eastern Europe.
For anyone tracking where the toughest online tournament regs come from, Brazil has overtaken several traditional poker nations, and the WSOP Online final-table composition is the clearest available evidence.
Elsewhere on the schedule
Event #23: $400 PLOSSUS concluded on September 14 with 6,029 entries generating a $2,266,904 prize pool — half of it paid out as progressive bounties, with the remainder shared among the top 511.
Denmark's Christoffer "Chrinopoli" Munk won it for $220,955 total, comprising $125,768 in bounties and $95,187 in tournament prize money, plus his own $30,000 Super Pass and first bracelet. The bounty-to-prize ratio there is a useful illustration of how PKO payouts actually distribute: Munk earned more from knockouts than from finishing first.
Munk beat Kai Lehto heads-up, denying the Finn a second bracelet of the series — Lehto had won the $1,500 Super Turbo Bounty PLO earlier in the month. Lehto took $119,463 for second.
The remaining PLOSSUS payouts illustrate the same point more sharply: seventh-place finisher "MiniAve" of Brazil banked $40,263, out-earning both fifth ($43,303 for "YJ2015") — narrowly — and sixth ("meloenenjacht," $33,407). In progressive knockout events, finishing position and total earnings routinely diverge.
Event #22: $400 COLOSSUS drew 16,455 entrants across multiple flights, with nine returning for a Day 2 and a top prize of $752,277. Brazil's Roberto Filho led with 185,215,768 chips (93bb), ahead of Norway's Evaldas Narmontas (154,269,902 / 77bb) and the Philippines' Delafuente Carlo Salvador (111,882,404 / 56bb). Austria's Ole Schemion was in the mix on 46,941,108 (24bb), arriving off a WCOOP High Roller win on PokerStars.
What this means for players
Freezeouts reward patience differently. If your edge comes from disciplined play rather than volume, a freezeout is structurally better for you than a re-entry event of the same buy-in. Fewer opponents can buy their way back in, and stack preservation has genuine value throughout.
Understand what a bounty prize pool does to your ranges. In PKO and progressive knockout formats, half the prize pool sits on players' heads, which widens correct calling ranges against short stacks considerably. Munk earned more in bounties than in prize money; if you are playing these events with standard MTT ranges, you are leaving money on the table. Our tournaments guide and what is equity explainer cover the underlying maths.
A bracelet costs $1,500 and one good week. La Francesca finished 11th at WSOP Europe a year ago and converted this September. Online bracelet events remain the cheapest realistic route to WSOP gold available, and the schedules run year-round.
Check which rooms serve your market. GGPoker's WSOP Online events are not available everywhere. Players in the US and other restricted markets have different options — our US poker sites guide, the Canada and UK pages, and reviews of Black Chip Poker and TigerGaming cover the alternatives.
Sources: PokerNews