A Winamax regular known as "oldepaso68" has won a record €922,104 in bounties in a single Winamax Space KO tournament — a haul that took just 258 minutes and dwarfed the event's €80,000 guarantee. His total payout was €927,783, of which first place itself was worth just over €5,000.
Winamax called it the biggest win ever in its online tournaments. Pokerfuse calculated the rate at roughly €3,574 per minute, or about €60 a second.
The tournament
The event was Winamax Series Event #318, a €100 Space KO played on Wednesday, September 16. It drew 1,108 entries and paid out €1,022,441 — more than ten times the guarantee. According to Pokerfuse, around 90% of everything the tournament paid went to one player.
That's only possible because of how Space KO works.
How Space KO works
Winamax launched Space KO in December 2024. It combines two popular formats:
- Random multipliers. Every bounty is assigned a random multiplier between 0.4x and 100x. The 100x multiplier appears roughly once in every 1,000 bounties.
- Progressive knockouts. When you eliminate a player, half the bounty is paid to you and half is added to your own bounty. The more players you knock out, the more you're worth.
Unlike traditional mystery bounty tournaments, where bounties are only revealed late in the event, Space KO bounties are live from the first hand. That means big multipliers can land at any stage.
The format creates the potential for enormous outliers. A single high multiplier on a large progressive bounty can produce a payout many times larger than the entire prize pool guarantee.
How the record was built
oldepaso68 reached the final table as chip leader, already holding a level-10 bounty token. Earlier, he had eliminated streamer mathestarZ in 66th place, who left with €4,400 in bounties.
The first jackpot came on hand #41 of the final table. oldepaso68 eliminated "YG Rafa," and the bounty spun to 156K. Half went to him and half was added to his own head.
His run wasn't smooth. He dropped below ten big blinds, then survived a three-way all in with A♠K♠. Later, he cracked Hanfly Bogus's aces and went on to beat "naznaz13" heads-up in just three hands.
Winning the tournament meant collecting his own bounty too. His second token after the win spun to 838K, the largest single Space KO bounty ever recorded. The previous record was 714K, won by "WildChampion" in January 2025.
The final table was streamed live by mathestarZ, dum_trip and WebTV Marrakech.
Who is oldepaso68?
According to Winamax, he's a solid regular at €10 to €50 buy-ins, with final tables in several of the site's regular tournaments. His previous best score was a Meteor tournament win the previous November, worth €40,200, of which €39,185 was bounties.
In other words, this was not a high-stakes pro taking down a big event. It was a mid-stakes regular who hit the right multipliers at the right time — exactly the type of story Winamax designed Space KO to produce.
Previous records and context
Before this, the biggest total Space KO haul belonged to "Queen Peach," who won close to €600,000 in tokens. Earlier in the same Winamax Series, "Le MARVEL" won €221,000 in bounties in a €50 Trident tournament.
Winamax has a long history with jackpot-style formats. Its Expresso lottery sit & go has produced almost 170 €1 million jackpots since 2013. Space KO brings that same lottery-style upside to multi-table tournaments.
The same Wednesday, the series paid out €3.12 million in total, and Team Winamax's Emilien Pitavy won Event #312 for €16,792.
The industry trend: bounties with jackpots
Space KO is part of a broader shift in online tournament design. Operators have found that randomized bounty formats attract recreational players because they offer a chance at a huge payout, regardless of finishing position.
According to Pokerfuse, similar formats are appearing across the industry:
- Betclic runs "Smash Knockout" tournaments.
- iPoker and WPN are developing progressive mystery bounty formats.
Mystery bounties have already become a fixture at major live and online festivals. Adding a progressive element and random multipliers from the start pushes the concept further.
For operators, the appeal is clear. Random jackpots make tournaments more exciting, give recreational players a reason to play, and create headline stories like this one. For professional players, the trade-off is more variance and less control over results.
Putting €922K in perspective
To understand how unusual this result is, consider the numbers. A €100 buy-in returning more than €927,000 is a return of more than 9,000 times the entry fee. First place in the regular prize pool was worth only about €5,000; nearly all of the value came from bounty multipliers.
For comparison, winning a live EPT Main Event requires a €5,300 buy-in and beating a field of well over a thousand players. At EPT Barcelona in August, Manuel Ferrari won just over €1 million for doing exactly that, against 1,823 entries. oldepaso68 earned a similar sum from a €100 online tournament in less than five hours.
Is it good for poker?
There are arguments on both sides.
For: Jackpot formats bring in recreational players, who keep games healthy. They also create viral moments that attract media attention and new players.
Against: When 90% of a tournament's payout goes to one player largely because of random multipliers, skill plays a smaller role. Regulars may find their edge diluted, and some worry that lottery-style formats blur the line between poker and casino games.
The answer probably depends on the player. For recreational players who play a few tournaments a week, the chance of a life-changing score is part of the appeal. For grinders, it's another source of variance to manage.
What this means for players
Understand the format before you play. In progressive bounty tournaments, your strategy should change depending on whether you cover your opponents. Knowing equity and pot odds is essential for making the right calls when bounties are in play.
Expect big swings. Formats like Space KO produce huge outliers but also long losing stretches. Strong bankroll management is critical.
Look for bounty events near you. Winamax isn't available in the US. US players can find progressive knockout and mystery bounty tournaments at Americas Cardroom and BetOnline. Our tournaments guide covers the main formats and where to find them.
oldepaso68's win will be remembered as a landmark for jackpot bounty formats — and as proof that a €100 buy-in can still produce a near-million-euro score.