Congya Zhang has won the $2,200 Global Poker Championship at the Merit Crystal Cove Casino in North Cyprus, banking $300,000 and the trophy as part of the 2026 Mediterranean Poker Party. She came into the final day 12th of 16 remaining players and ended it with every chip in play.
It is the latest entry in a year that has reshaped the top of the women's live tournament record, and Zhang is aware of it.
"This is a fantastic year for me, so far," she said. "I'm growing up very fast. I feel very confident in myself."
From 12th of 16 to the trophy
Zhang scored a knockout in the opening few hands of the final day, then went quiet. She reached the nine-handed final table as one of the shorter stacks while Adrian State ran over the last two tables.
The Romanian's run was genuinely dominant for a stretch. State busted Anatoly Korochenskiy in 13th with a set of tens, picked up pocket tens again the very next hand to eliminate Roman Gadzhiev in 12th, then found pocket kings in the small blind against Mehmet Dalkilic's queens in the big blind. He finished Dalkilic off a few hands later to set the final table and take the chip lead from Sergei Petrushevskii.
State kept squeezing, sending Selahaddin Bedir out in ninth and applying near-continuous pressure to the shorter stacks on his left. Then the tide turned — a cooler against Petrushevskii, a big pot lost to Mengdian Peng, and finally a misjudged re-shove from the big blind after the dinner break that ran straight into Zhang's ace-king. State out in fifth for $80,000.
Final table payouts
| Place | Player | Country | Prize |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Congya Zhang | China | $300,000 |
| 2 | Sergei Petrushevskii | Russian Federation | $200,000 |
| 3 | Yilu Yuan | China | $140,000 |
| 4 | Mengdian Peng | China | $100,000 |
| 5 | Adrian State | Romania | $80,000 |
| 6 | Paul Esau | Germany | $65,000 |
| 7 | Oguzhan Kasar | Turkey | $52,000 |
| 8 | Fahredin Mustafov | Bulgaria | $40,000 |
| 9 | Selahaddin Bedir | Turkey | $29,000 |
Zhang's acceleration began six-handed. She doubled through Paul Esau and later sent him out in sixth, then got paid by Petrushevskii with a rivered straight to move into second place. Knocking out State gave her a commanding lead with four players left — three of them Chinese.
"I'm so proud of us, it's a big moment for China," Zhang said of the table composition. "Every Chinese player who comes so far to be here, they are all very good players."
That did not stop her busting both of them. Peng went out fourth, Yilu Yuan third when Zhang's pocket tens held. Heads-up lasted under 20 minutes: Zhang limped the button with roughly a 4-1 lead, Petrushevskii jammed pocket fives, and Zhang called with jacks.
Patience as an explicit strategy
Zhang's own account of the run is unusually specific about process rather than results.
"Day 2, I played very good. I'm very satisfied with myself. Day 3, I was a little bit nervous because I'm too short, but I believe in myself, so I always hang on... I have a lot of patience," she said. "I got a lot of good hands and won all the flips when I had a short stack, so it's gone very smoothly."
That combination — hanging on while short, then compounding every double — is the shape of a huge number of tournament wins, and it is also the shape most recreational players get wrong. The instinct when short-stacked at a final table with escalating pay jumps is either to freeze entirely or to gamble at the first excuse. Zhang did neither; she stayed alive through the pay jumps that mattered and then applied pressure once she had chips.
Anyone studying that dynamic should start with our guide to ICM, which explains why chips at a final table are not worth what the chip count says they are, and why the correct play with 12 big blinds at a nine-handed final table looks nothing like the correct play with the same stack on the bubble.
The context: a year of women winning majors
Zhang's win lands in a year that has been unusually good for women in open-field events. Renee Xie became the first female GUKPT champion earlier this month in Luton. Kristen Foxen won the $25,000 WSOP High Roller in June for her sixth bracelet, a title she described as a dream. Now Zhang takes a $300,000 open-field trophy at a major international festival.
The pattern is worth being careful about. Women remain a small percentage of large open fields, which means results cluster and small-sample effects are real. What is more meaningful than any single win is that these are not soft-field results — the Global Poker Championship final table included Bedir, who won the Merit Poker NOIR Series Main Event for $525,000 in August, and State, a player with a serious European record.
The Mediterranean Poker Party has become one of the more significant stops outside the US and Europe's traditional circuit, with a $5 million guaranteed Main Event anchoring the festival. Merit's North Cyprus property has spent several years building toward that scale, and the field quality at the Global Poker Championship reflects it.
"I love it here, I love Cyprus, I love Merit," Zhang said. "This is Paradise, I think."
What this means for players
Short stacks at final tables are not dead money. Zhang started the final day 12th of 16 and won. Pay-jump structures at events like this one — where ninth pays $29,000 and first pays $300,000 — reward survival more than they reward aggression, right up until the moment you have enough chips to use them. Knowing where that line sits is the single most valuable final-table skill, and it is learnable. Our poker strategy section covers the fundamentals.
Watch for the leader's inflection point. State led and looked unbeatable, then lost two pots and made a bad re-shove. Chip leaders at final tables tend to play a high-variance style that works until it does not; if you are short and patient, your equity often comes from the leader's mistakes rather than your own good cards.
Destination festivals are where mid-stakes fields get deepest. A $2,200 buy-in with a $300,000 top prize implies a substantial field, and the Mediterranean Poker Party draws from Europe, Turkey, Russia and increasingly China. If you are building a live calendar, these festivals offer better value per travel day than most single-event trips.
For players looking to qualify into live festivals from home, most of the major rooms run satellite ladders — our tournaments hub and the best real money poker sites list are good starting points, and the BetOnline review covers one of the more active US-facing tournament schedules.
Sources: PokerNews