Sixty-seven players down to 28 in four levels. That is how fast the EPT Barcelona 2026 Main Event tightened up — and everyone still standing has €34,850 banked, with €1,370,050 waiting for the champion out of an €8,841,550 prize pool built by 1,823 entries.
The facts: Criado in front, Akemi in the hunt
Jose Criado bagged 5,045,000 chips (126 big blinds) to take the lead, and his story carries a detail worth underlining: he qualified through an online satellite and had never cashed an EPT Main Event before. Fellow Spaniard Gerard Carbo follows with 4,815,000, and the Netherlands' Joris Ruijs sits third with 4,625,000.
Fifth on the counts is Brazil's Barbara Akemi with 3,445,000 and 86 big blinds. Akemi was already the first Brazilian woman to win the Sunday Million and the first to add a bracelet to that; she is now the deepest a Brazilian woman has ever run in an EPT Main Event — and the only woman left in the field. Brazil keeps its numbers too: Fabricio Nociolini (2,165,000) and Vinicius Goncalves (2,090,000) also bagged top-ten stacks.
Day 5 restarts on Level 25 with blinds of 20,000/40,000 and a 40,000 ante, for another four 90-minute levels.
Why it matters: at this stage, chips won and chips risked aren't worth the same
Here is the lesson that transfers straight to your $20 tournament. With pay jumps running from €34,850 to €1.37 million, chip value stops being linear: the chip you risk is worth less than the chip you win. That is ICM, and it separates the players who advance from the ones who merely survive.
A big stack like Akemi's isn't there to coast. It's there to squeeze the medium stacks, who have the most to lose from a mistake. And a short stack isn't there to pray — it's there to pick its table, its position and its shoving spot. The classic error in this zone is playing as if the tournament were over. It isn't. The expensive part just started.
Look at the chip leader again, too. A satellite qualifier is leading a 1,823-entry field. That isn't luck: a well-played satellite buys the most expensive seat of your year for a fraction of the price, and the format has rules of its own — we break them down in our guide to poker satellites and how to qualify.
The close
Tomorrow we find out whether Spain keeps the trophy at home or Brazil writes a brand-new chapter. In the meantime, you have homework: pull up one of your own bubble hands from last week and ask whether you played it with chips or with fear.
Inside the KryptoKings club we take those hands apart together. Learn, evolve, dominate.