Adrián Mateos has pulled off something no one in poker history had managed before. The 31-year-old Spaniard outlasted a brutal field to win Event #41, the $250,000 Super High Roller at the 2026 World Series of Poker, banking $4,334,411 and a sixth career bracelet — and in doing so became the youngest player ever to reach that milestone.
Standing between him and the record was Bryn Kenney, the game’s all-time live earnings leader. Kenney carried the chip lead into the final day but ran into a buzzsaw, ultimately settling for runner-up after the two traded blows heads-up for the title.
A 56-handed murderers’ row
The Super High Roller attracted just 56 entries, but every seat was dangerous. Those buy-ins stacked up into a $13,720,000 prize pool, and the closing stages played out against a who’s-who of the nosebleed circuit. Phil Ivey, Jason Koon and Sean Winter were all still alive deep into the event before Mateos worked his way through them one at a time.
No one has ever climbed to six bracelets faster. The Winamax Team Pro won his first all the way back in 2013, taking down the WSOP Europe Main Event for €1 million at just 19. Thirteen summers later he has five more, and his live tournament earnings now sit north of $13.9 million.
A final table Asia’s railbirds already know
The $250,000 tier is the same rarefied air that defines the Triton Series stops in Jeju and the wider Asian super-high-roller scene. The names Mateos toppled — Kenney, Ivey, Koon, Winter — are regulars at those tables, where seven-figure pots and six-figure buy-ins have become a fixture of the calendar. For fans across the region who follow that circuit, this was a familiar lineup simply relocated to Las Vegas for the summer.
Kenney’s near-miss carries its own weight. Still the sport’s all-time money leader, he has now come up one spot short in one of the year’s richest events — proof that even the deepest résumé guarantees nothing when the field is this stacked.
The number to watch
Mateos joins a tiny club of six-time bracelet winners, and at 31 he has decades to keep adding to the tally. As the series rolls on toward the $10,000 Main Event in July, the open question is whether anyone can match his pace — and whether one of the Asian circuit’s own can crash the leaderboard before the summer is out.