An all-Brazilian heads-up, a bracelet that slipped away in 2022, and a fourth title for Brazil in the series. Bruno Ikeda won Event #16 of the 2026 WSOP Online, the $500 Deepstack Championship, on Monday, banking $194,703, his first WSOP bracelet and a $30,000 Super Pass to the WSOP Paradise Super Main Event. Across the table sat Lucas Teixeira, the Event #2 champion of this same series, who was chasing a second title in under three weeks and settled for $152,663.
The facts: 3,971 entries, 465 paid and a final table spanning three continents
The tournament drew 3,971 entries and paid $1,886,225 to the top 465, about 11.7% of the field. John Juanda, Sergi Reixach and Darryll Fish were among the cashers. South Korea's Seunghyuk Jung burst the final-table bubble in 10th, and the nine finalists came from eight countries: Mexico's Artem Aiutkulov left in 9th ($27,814), followed by Mykola Kotovych (8th, $35,474), Eng Soon Ewe (7th, $45,242), Boris Angelov (6th, $57,701) and Finland's Juho Suutari (5th, $73,950). Argentina's Lucas Pochat took 4th for $93,855.
Three-handed, Ikeda won the flip that turned the tournament: all in preflop with J-10 against 3-3, and a 6-J-2-A-8 board delivered the pair. Shortly after, again holding J-10, he made trips on 2-9-10-10-3 against Teixeira's J-9 and took the lead. He eliminated Germany's Yannick Schneider in 3rd ($119,700) and entered heads-up play with more than a 4-to-1 chip lead. The final hand was a preflop all-in of A-K against K-10; the 9-5-4-J-2 board brought no surprises, and the bracelet went to Brazil for the second day running after João Hayashi's Rounder Cup win.
For Ikeda the story ran deeper: in 2022 he lost the heads-up of an online bracelet event, the $840 6-Handed Bounty, to Finland's Joni Jouhkimainen. Teixeira, for his part, had already collected $579,752 in the Gladiators of Poker earlier in this festival.
Why it matters: dominating a hand beats owning the chips
The final hand is textbook and worth a pause. A-K versus K-10 is what we call a dominated hand: both share the king, and the player with the worse kicker, the second card that breaks ties, arrives with roughly 26% equity. It is neither a bad beat nor a cooler; it is the best possible scenario for the player committing chips with A-K. With a 4-to-1 lead, Ikeda did not need to invent anything: heads-up pressure alone would eventually force the short stack all in with a worse hand.
Second lesson, from the final table: 10th and 9th place cashed for exactly the same amount, $27,814. The final-table bubble carried no cost; the first real jump came from 9th to 8th ($7,660), and every step after that weighed more. That is ICM, the model that converts chips into money according to the payouts, and it explains why six-handed you only accept flips when someone else is the one going short.
Third, the long view: four years of volume separate the 2022 runner-up finish from the 2026 title. A lost heads-up is not a verdict, it is a sample, and the sample keeps growing as long as you keep playing well. If you want to approach your first online tournament with that mindset, we break down hands like this every week in the community. Would you have moved all in with K-10 as the short stack? Tell us.