692 entries, 105 survivors and a stack of sealed envelopes that starts opening this afternoon. The Start-Up Mystery Bounty at BSOP Floripa 2026 showed why it is the Brazilian tour's favourite opening event: its two R$1,200 flights at the Costão do Santinho resort drew 301 entries on Friday afternoon and 391 at night, and Saturday's Day 2 kicks off at 2 p.m. with the champion, and the mystery bounties, still to be decided.
The facts: two leaders almost level and a Uruguayan among the big stacks
Day 1A sent 46 players through, all of them already in the money, with Vinicius Fortes on top with 757,000 chips. Behind him came Aloisio Dourado, the BSOP 2026 ranking leader, with more than 550,000, and Gabriel Kumagai with 547,000. The best Spanish-speaking player was Uruguay's Bruno Bonilla, seventh in his flight with 358,000, joined by Chile's Rafael Pardo (147,000), Guillermo Neira (81,000) and Mauricio Zemán (59,000).
Day 1B added 59 more. Iuri Maia, from Pernambuco, led with 623,000, just a thousand chips ahead of Leandro Ferreira (622,000), with familiar names such as Rodrigo Garrido (365,000) and Ax de Castro (345,000) also through. Play resumes at the 3,000/6,000 level with a big blind ante.
Friday also crowned the stop's first high-roller champion. Eduardo Viana, a cash-game specialist from Santarém in the state of Pará, won the R$10,000 1-Day High Roller from a 65-entry field for R$147,400. Recreational player Ricardo Duarte was runner-up for R$98,400 and Kaio Camargo third for R$76,500, at a final table that included Lucas Scafini, Lauriê Tournier, Gustavo Dias and Vinicius Gonçalves. Alexandre Couto (4K 1-Day PKO), Luiz Hota (H.O.R.S.E.) and Russia's Aleksandr Diudiaev (Super 500) rounded out the day's winners.
And the stop is only getting started: the R$4,000 Main Event and the 25K Super High Roller both open today, the peak of a 26-event schedule we previewed earlier this week.
Why it matters: Day 2 of a mystery bounty is a different tournament
With 105 players left and the envelopes still sealed, what gets played this afternoon is not Friday's tournament. In a mystery bounty, every knockout from here pays a prize that can be worth more than a pay jump, and that reshapes ranges: the short stack carrying a bounty becomes a target, and the big stack gains reasons to call all-ins it would fold in a regular event. Anyone who doesn't recalculate their shoves and calls for this phase, as we explain in our PKO guide, is leaving expected value on the table.
The second lesson belongs to Viana. A player who makes his living at cash games sat down in a R$10,000 tournament and won it. The skills transfer, but the mindset shifts: in cash games a chip is worth the same all night and every hand pays rake, which is why rakeback matters so much to a specialist's yearly results; in a tournament, a chip's value depends on the blinds and the payouts. A cash player understanding that shift and applying it says more about his method than the trophy does.
The third, and maybe the most honest, came from the champion himself when he spoke about his runner-up: a recreational player who shows up at every BSOP reached the heads-up of a high roller. Variance runs both ways, and respecting it is part of the game.
Following the envelope opening or the Main Event's first flight? Tell us in the community: we're covering the stop all the way to Tuesday's crown.