If you want to catch up on poker news from September 28 to October 4, 2026, the week closes one online series and opens a regulatory question. GGPoker finished WSOP Online with its last bracelet event. PokerStars crowned three No-Limit Hold'em Main Event winners at WCOOP. The Star Sydney produced a WPT champion who never gave up the final-table chip lead. Norway's culture ministry put a state-run online poker product out for public comment. Last week's September 21–27 roundup followed the same WSOP Online series through the $5,000 Main Event. This week is the final bracelet of that schedule.

Sergio Aido Wins the WSOP Online $10,000 GGMillion$ Again for a Third Bracelet

According to PokerNews on September 30, 2026, Spain's Sergio Aido won Event #33: $10,000 GGMillion$ High Rollers, the last bracelet event of the 2026 WSOP Online on GGPoker. He collected $2,228,762, a third WSOP bracelet, and a $30,000 Super Pass to the 2026 WSOP Paradise Super Main Event. CardPlayer on September 30 puts the field at 1,754. The GGPoker post it quotes, from September 29, puts the prize pool at $17,013,800. Poker.org on September 29 says that pool cleared a $10,000,000 guarantee. The top four payouts all cleared $1 million, and every finalist was guaranteed $278,847.

The country column below is the GGPoker lobby label, which PokerNews flags explicitly. Aido is listed as Mexico in that lobby. PokerNews still calls him a Spanish player in the story, and CardPlayer does the same. Roeland Peeks is described as an Austria-based Dutchman, with Austria in the lobby. Alessandro De Michele is a Slovenia-based Italian, with Slovenia in the lobby.

CardPlayer on September 30 adds the career frame. Aido had already won this same tournament in 2024, from 1,433 entries, for his second bracelet. His first bracelet was live: a $50,000 high roller in Las Vegas in the summer of 2024, for $2 million. CardPlayer places him second among Spanish WSOP players, behind only Adrian Mateos, who has six bracelets and $72.4 million in career earnings. Aido's own career earnings are listed at $29.2 million. The GGMillion$ score is his eighth seven-figure cash and his first of 2026. Poker.org on September 29 notes that Matheus Machado reached this same final table in 2025 and finished fifth, and that in 2024 Christopher Nguyen finished seventh while Aido won.

Peeks sat down with 172 big blinds, 99 more than Aido in second. Machado then removed the first four players. Niklas Astedt three-bet a late-position open, Machado four-bet, and Astedt shoved 32 big blinds with pocket queens into pocket aces. No queen arrived. De Michele, under seven big blinds, opened ace-nine. Machado three-bet with pocket queens, De Michele called, flopped a nine, and was drawing dead by the turn after Machado flopped a set. Johannes Straver three-bet shoved 15 big blinds from the big blind with ace-queen. Machado had min-raised pocket tens from early position, called, and flopped a set. Straver was dead on the turn.

Oshri Lahmani, with 19 big blinds, found pocket jacks in the big blind and shoved over Machado's early-position open. Machado called with ace-king. The jacks were still ahead on the turn. A king on the river ended it, and Machado moved into second in chips. Ole Schemion open-shoved nine big blinds with ace-four. Nguyen called queen-jack from the big blind. Both players paired the flop, Schemion's fours behind Nguyen's queens, and another queen on the turn locked the pot. Schemion finished fifth for $788,136. The remaining four players were each guaranteed more than $1 million.

Nguyen's exit is the hand worth reading slowly. PokerNews says Aido min-raised the button with the king-three of hearts, Nguyen called the king-eight of spades from the big blind, and the flop was king-three-deuce with two diamonds. CardPlayer publishes the all-in board as K♦ 3♦ 2♣ 2♦, with the Q♦ on the river. Aido's king and three are two pair, kings and threes. Nguyen's king plays with the board pair of deuces, so he has kings and deuces. Kings and threes are ahead. The queen on the river does not change that. Nguyen took $1,021,994 in fourth.

Peeks, still the start-of-day chip leader on the way in, lost the rest in a blind-versus-blind pot with Machado. He limped ace-five, Machado three-bet ace-ten, and Peeks ripped in 22 big blinds. Neither player paired. Machado's ten-kicker sent the match to heads-up. PokerNews lists the heads-up stacks as 108,433,938 for Aido (90 big blinds) and 66,966,062 for Machado (56 big blinds). Machado later doubled after flopping a wheel. Aido took the lead back in a hand where he flopped a set of deuces and Machado had paired a jack.

The last hand came from a 31-big-blind stack. Machado limped ace-trey. Aido three-bet the ace-seven of diamonds and called the shove. The ace-seven held. Machado's runner-up prize was $1,718,571. That pot also ended the 2026 WSOP Online. The final table was streamed on GGPoker's YouTube channel, with Jeff Gross hosting and Alex Foxen as the guest.

Alessio La Francesca Wins the $10,000 Heads-Up for a Second Bracelet

According to PokerNews on September 28, Alessio La Francesca, an Italian based in Albania, won a second bracelet in Event #31: $10,000 Heads Up NLH Championship. The final four returned on the evening of September 27. He beat Pavel Plesuv heads-up for $352,561. The field was 123 players, and the prize pool was $1,193,100. The same article says that two weeks earlier he had won the $1,500 GGMasters Freezeout Championship for $316,037, a first bracelet, and a $30,000 Super Pass to the 2026 WSOP Paradise Super Main Event.

Heads-up is a different shape from the nine-handed final you just read. Every round is one opponent. There is no multiway flop, and the payout jumps are tied to the round you lose, not to a single final table. The top 16 cashed. A round-of-16 exit paid $23,504. The quarterfinals paid $47,008, which is what Japan's Takashi Ogura received, along with Aliaksei Boika, Ole Schemion, and Georgii Sieemshchikov. The semifinals paid $117,520 each to Aliaksandr Shylko of Estonia and Aleksey Borokov of the UAE. Countries in that report are lobby labels.

Plesuv, listed in Slovenia, won $211,536 for second. PokerNews notes that he won the Millionaire Maker in 2023 and that this was his fourth runner-up finish in a bracelet event. La Francesca's week, put next to Aido's, is two different ways to collect a second piece of WSOP hardware inside the same online series: one player closed the schedule in a 1,754-entry high roller, and the other won a 123-player heads-up bracket two days earlier.

Lococo and Boianovsky Win WCOOP Mains, with Boianovsky Adding a SCOOP Double

According to PokerNews on October 1, PokerStars closed WCOOP 2026 over the weekend by crowning three No-Limit Hold'em Main Event champions. The buy-ins are far apart, and the titles are separate. Argentina's Alejandro "[Papo]AR" Lococo won the $1,050 Main Event for $343,242. The event drew 2,310 entries and cleared a $2,000,000 guarantee, with a prize pool of more than $2.3 million. He started the final day third in chips, behind Brazil's "calldeKhig" and Jorge "jorginho88" Abreu. The payout table lists Abreu's country as Austria. The story text calls him Portugal's player. The table is the figure used here.

Lococo had the lead by the time heads-up started against Ireland-based "Goodarla" and did not give it back. He got the chips in preflop with Q♦ 4♠ against 7♥ 10♥ and won on a runout the article does not list. Goodarla's prize for second was $244,673. PokerNews also describes Lococo as coming from a Triton Jeju II series in which he had been chasing a total just short of $1 million. The WCOOP title is a separate score from that chase.

The $10,300 Main Event is the historical line in the same report. Brazil's Felipe "lipe piv" Boianovsky won $551,632 and became the first player to take both a SCOOP Main Event and a WCOOP Main Event at a buy-in of $10,000 or more. His SCOOP win was the $10,300 in June 2023, for $1,036,200. This WCOOP field was 289 entries, and the prize pool was just under $2.9 million, above the advertised guarantee. He overcame start-of-day chip leads held by Dante "dantegoyaF" Goya, Thomas "MarToMchat" Boivin, and Pablo "pabritz" Brito Silva. Three of the finalists were Brazilian. Second place went to Canada's "13santoy13" for $412,914.

The $109 Main Event was the large field. It drew 14,533 entries, passed a $1.25 million guarantee, and built a $1,453,300 prize pool, with more than 2,000 players in the money. Ukraine's "ihor888888" started the final table sixth in chips, got past a start-of-day lead held by "wes345", and beat Hungary's "shanyji" heads-up for $172,022. If you place the three first prizes next to each other, the $10,300 paid the most cash, the $1,050 paid the middle title, and the $109 paid $172,022 from a field about fifty times larger than the high roller. They are three championships, not three finishes in one event.

Alex Thompson Wins the WPT Australia Championship Without Losing the Chip Lead

According to PokerNews on October 1, Alex Thompson won the WPT Australia Championship at The Star Sydney. The buy-in is listed as $5,000, the field was 527 entries, and the first prize is AUD $465,900. PokerNews says he had no big tournament cashes before this event. The published final table has six places. He began it with the chip lead and did not surrender that lead. Filip Radic evened the counts once. The lead went back to Thompson.

More than two hours of the livestream passed before anyone busted. Ryan Henry, the shortest stack, got the chips in with Q♦ 4♥ and lost to Radic's K♥ 10♥, finishing sixth for $89,000. Tingjia Huang finished fifth for $119,000. Jack Sweet finished fourth for $159,000 after doubling through a race into one of the big stacks. Pranav Bhatt was the short stack three-handed and finished third for $214,000.

Heads-up started with Thompson ahead 6 to 1. The match lasted five minutes. On the last hand he held J-10, put Radic all in, and Radic called with 6-5. Radic did not pair. The article writes those two hands with the suits hidden, so the suits are not part of this recap. Radic's runner-up prize was $290,000. The other payouts in the table are printed with a dollar sign and without a second currency note. The lead paragraph is the one that marks the winner as Australian dollars.

Norway Opens a Consultation on Norsk Tipping Online Poker

According to PokerNews on October 3, Norway's Ministry of Culture and Equality opened a public consultation that would let state-owned Norsk Tipping offer online poker tournaments and cash games. The consultation runs until November 29. PokerNews says the proposal was first reported by Poker.pro. Culture and Equality Minister Lubna Jaffery is quoted as saying that many Norwegians already play online poker, and that a responsible offer inside Norway is preferable to unregulated games at foreign commercial companies driven by profit.

A 2022 University of Bergen survey, as cited in that article, found close to 90,000 Norwegians playing online poker with foreign operators each year. Norsk Tipping now estimates the figure could be between 100,000 and 150,000. The product in the consultation is not an open license. Norsk Tipping would stay the only regulated provider. PokerStars stopped serving Norwegian players in 2023, and PokerNews says other major operators also withdrew under regulatory pressure. They would not return under this proposal. Payment blocking has been used since 2010. DNS blocking was introduced in 2025.

The dollar figures are PokerNews approximations, not a live exchange rate. The cash-game cap is the line that maps cleanly onto a 100-big-blind stack. NOK 1,000 divided by a NOK 10 big blind is 100 big blinds, and that is the ceiling, not a typical stack you can reload above. The tournament cap of NOK 2,500, about $260, sits in a different range from the $10,000 GGMillion$ and the $10,300 WCOOP Main Event elsewhere in this week. The platform would also close between 1 a.m. and 7 a.m. None of this is a live site yet. PokerNews frames the measure as a proposal under consultation, and says the test, if it is approved, is whether players who already play elsewhere actually sit in the capped games.

Taken together, the week's center of gravity is the last WSOP Online bracelet, the three WCOOP Main Events, and a Norwegian proposal whose stake caps are part of the story rather than a footnote.