Italian player Lorenzo Sabato has won the La Notte Degli Assi Main Event at Casino di Venezia, taking home €114,500 and the trophy after a heads-up deal with fellow Italian Emanuele Biscaro. The tournament, played from October 11 to 19 as part of a nine-day festival, drew 2,630 entries against a €1,000,000 guarantee. Sabato entered the final day as chip leader and never gave the lead back, a rare wire-to-wire performance in a field that large. The event also stood out for its unusual rebuy-based format, which is worth studying if you play live tournaments in Europe. For a wider look at where to find big events, see our tournaments page.
The Venue and the Field
The Casino di Venezia describes itself as the world's oldest casino. It has hosted EPT Venice, the PokerGO Tour and even a Guinness World Record attempt, so the poker pedigree is real. The 2026 festival's Main Event carried a €1,000,000 guarantee and attracted 2,630 entries across ten Day 1 flights, labelled 1A through 1I plus a Last Chance flight. The entry count means the field cleared the guarantee comfortably, with the structure encouraging multiple entries.
The buy-in structure was layered. Flights 1A to 1D cost €400 with a €300 rebuy available to busted players, while flights 1E to 1I and the Last Chance flight cost €600 with a €400 rebuy. Reporting differed slightly on the lowest price point, with the body text citing €400 to €600 and the meta description mentioning €300, €400 or €600, which likely reflects the rebuy prices. Starting stacks were 200,000 chips, and levels lasted 30 minutes in all flights except Last Chance, which used 20-minute levels.
Rebuys in a Main Event are uncommon in 2026, when most festivals have moved to straightforward re-entry. The format also allowed players to enter every one of the ten Day 1 flights without limit, even if they had already built a Day 2 stack. The catch was that only the largest stack across all flights advanced to Day 2. All other stacks were removed from play, but their owners received a minimum payout of €900. In effect, Day 1 doubled as a sort of leaderboard-and-cash-back mechanism: you could keep firing, and your extra stacks always returned €900.
Final Table Results
The final-table payouts were:
| Rank | Player | Country | Prize |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | Lorenzo Sabato | Italy | €114,500* |
| 2nd | Emanuele Biscaro | Italy | €98,500* |
| 3rd | Enrico Esposito | Italy | €56,600 |
| 4th | Matthew Lazzaretto | Italy | €36,000 |
| 5th | Nicola Brughitta | Italy | €25,100 |
| 6th | Sabrina Corrias | Italy | €18,100 |
| 7th | Mariusz Czech | Poland | €13,200 |
| 8th | Emilio Izvira | Italy | €9,900 |
*Indicates a deal was made.
Sabato entered the final day as chip leader with 83,600,000 chips. Enrico Esposito held 69,000,000, and Marino Focarelli had 42,400,000. Sabato, in the words of the report, "went wire-to-wire" and "embraced the role of executioner." Among his key hands: his pocket aces beat Izvira's pocket queens to eliminate the eighth-place finisher; he won a flip against Sabrina Corrias, who went out in sixth "to applause"; and his pocket nines held against Esposito's big slick (ace-king) to put him heads-up with Biscaro. Mariusz Czech of Poland, the only non-Italian at the final table and described as a favourite of the UK tour, went out in seventh.
The Heads-Up Deal
With two players left, the payouts on the table were €130,000 for first and €82,000 for second. The players struck a deal in which Sabato took €109,500 and Biscaro €98,500, leaving €5,000 and the trophy to be decided by play. That is how the listed first prize of €114,500 arises: the €109,500 deal figure plus the €5,000 bonus. The report did not spell out that arithmetic, but the numbers line up.
The final hand was a classic heads-up shove-or-fold situation. Biscaro raised with K♥6♥, and Sabato moved all-in with Q♥J♦. The board ran 10♦ 6♣ J♥ A♣ 9♥, pairing both players, but Sabato's pair of jacks beat Biscaro's pair of sixes.
Deals at the end of tournaments are common, but they are worth understanding. If you want to know why players can often negotiate based on ICM and then play for a small amount, our glossary page explains how those calculations work.
Why the Format Matters
La Notte Degli Assi is a useful case study in how European festivals experiment with structures. The rebuy-and-minimum-payout model gives recreational players a floor: even if their Day 1 flight does not go well, they leave with €900 if they have chips at the end. It also keeps the player count high, since busted players can come back with a rebuy. For professionals, the format raises the question of how many bullets are worth firing. Because only the largest stack advances to Day 2, extra entries have value only if they beat your previous best stack, and a stack that will be removed from play still returns €900. Multiple entries therefore carry a built-in partial refund, which changes the maths of buying in again.
This is related to bankroll concepts we cover in our bankroll management guide: when you can re-enter, your effective buy-in is the total you are willing to spend, not the headline price. Players at this festival needed to decide their budget before the first flight.
What This Means for Players
Choose your flight. With ten flights and a mix of €400 and €600 buy-ins, flight selection mattered. Lower-priced flights offered cheaper rebuys; higher-priced flights offered bigger stacks relative to the cost. Weekend flights usually draw softer fields.
Plan for the long stage. Sabato's chip lead going into the final day meant he could apply pressure and choose his spots. If you reach a final table as the short stack, our poker strategy hub and equity explainer can help you with push-fold decisions.
Follow the deal logic. Sabato and Biscaro made a deal that gave the chip leader slightly more money while leaving a small prize for the trophy. That arrangement is common, and it is worth understanding before you sit at a final table.
Look for European events. Winning in Venice required a mix of tournament skill and the endurance to play across nine days of the festival. If you want to find where to play live, our online poker vs live poker comparison outlines the trade-offs.
Outlook
Sabato's win gives Italian poker a feel-good domestic story. Seven of the eight final-table players were Italian, with Mariusz Czech the lone exception, and the €1,000,000 guarantee was comfortably met with 2,630 entries. The festival also offers a template for how a mid-priced live event can use rebuys, minimum payouts and promotional side prizes to make a single tournament feel like a full festival. For Sabato, a wire-to-wire win and a €114,500 prize is a career-defining result.