Vito Branciforte Wins WSOP Super Circuit Rozvadov €3K Main Event

Every satellite grinder dreams about this. Turn a small online ticket into a live seat, survive a few days against a tough European field, then hold the trophy at the end. Vito Branciforte just did it. The Italian, who lives in Germany, won the €3,000 WSOP Super Circuit Main Event at King’s Resort in Rozvadov for €370,000 and his first WSOP Circuit gold ring. He got his seat through a GGPoker satellite.

There’s a second story here that matters almost as much. The Main Event drew 505 entries against a €2,000,000 guarantee, which left a €485,000 overlay. And that wasn’t a one-off. By PokerNews’ count, 12 of the festival’s 13 guaranteed ring events overlaid. Rozvadov is one of the busiest poker rooms in Europe, so that’s unusual, and it’s worth looking at why.

Quick facts: 2026 WSOP Super Circuit Rozvadov Main Event

• Winner: Vito Branciforte (Italy, lives in Germany) – €370,000 + gold ring
• Runner-up: Stanislaw Miadzel (Poland) – €245,000
• Buy-in: €3,000
• Entries: 505
• Guarantee: €2,000,000
• Overlay: €485,000 (gross buy-ins of €1,515,000 vs the €2M guarantee)
• Qualification: GGPoker online satellite
• Festival dates: October 28 – November 11, 2026 (Main Event Day 1s: November 5–7)

Tournament Overview

This was the first time King’s Resort hosted a festival under the Super Circuit name. King’s has run regular WSOP Circuit stops for years, including one in January 2026, and it hosted WSOP Europe from 2017 until the series moved to Prague this year. The Super Circuit was meant to bring big-guarantee WSOP events back to Rozvadov in the autumn: 18 ring events and roughly €5 million in total guarantees between October 28 and November 11.

The Main Event (Ring Event #13) was the headline event. It had a €3,000 buy-in, unlimited re-entry, three Day 1 flights from November 5 to 7, and a €2 million guarantee. That’s the biggest Circuit-level guarantee King’s has ever offered. Players could also qualify through €200 live satellites at the venue (each with a €15,000 guarantee) or through online qualifiers on GGPoker. Branciforte took the online route.

How Vito Branciforte Won the Final Table

Branciforte started the final nine as chip leader, and he finished the job without ever giving up the lead. Most of the big eliminations were his:

• Santiago Romero (7th, €44,000): Branciforte’s pocket eights held against Romero’s pocket fours.
• Ilia Krupin (5th, €85,000): Branciforte had a Broadway straight, and Krupin’s flush draw missed.
• Aleksandrs Zenkovs (4th, €120,000): Zenkovs got his A♥10♥ in against Branciforte’s Q♠Q♣ and didn’t improve. Zenkovs had already won the €500 King’s GCOP ring earlier in the festival, so he still had a great series.
• Mohsen Borhani (3rd, €171,000): Borhani’s pocket tens ran into aces. According to PokerNews, the €171,000 was more than ten times his previous lifetime live earnings.

Branciforte went into heads-up with about a 5-to-1 chip lead over Stanislaw Miadzel, a King’s regular. Miadzel won a few pots back, but the last hand ended it in a way that’s painful to watch. The board ran A♦ 10♥ 8♥ and then the Q♥ on the river. Both players made a flush, and Branciforte’s J♥7♥ was the higher one. Miadzel still took home a career-best €245,000.

Final Table Results

Place	Player	Country	Prize
1	Vito Branciforte	Italy	€370,000
2	Stanislaw Miadzel	Poland	€245,000
3	Mohsen Borhani	Germany	€171,000
4	Aleksandrs Zenkovs	Latvia	€120,000
5	Ilia Krupin	Russia	€85,000
6	Maor Zaharagi	Israel	€59,500
7	Santiago Romero	Argentina	€44,000
8	Mousa Awad	Romania	€33,000
9	Berhane Yoseph	Germany	€25,000

The nine finalists shared €1,152,500, which is about 58% of the prize pool. The other ~€850,000 went to players who cashed before the final table. Some smaller stories: Maor Zaharagi was runner-up in a €1,100 WSOPC Main Event at King’s in 2024 for €108,550, so this is his second deep Main Event run in the room. Berhane Yoseph had just over $13,000 in lifetime earnings before this, and he nearly tripled that with a ninth-place finish.

Who Is Vito Branciforte?

“Online qualifier” makes him sound like a newcomer who got lucky, but he isn’t. German outlet Pokerexklusiv describes him as an experienced regular who just hadn’t won a ring yet. His results back that up: an 8th-place finish in the 2023 WSOP $800 Deepstack for $48,947, and a $50,000 cash in the $25,000 Super Main Event at WSOP Paradise in December 2025. The €370,000 is easily the biggest score of his career.

The takeaway for players: satellites aren’t only for recreational players. Strong regulars use them all the time to play bigger buy-ins without risking €3,000 of their own bankroll on one event. Branciforte paid satellite money and played a €3,000 tournament that had €2 million in it.

The €485,000 Overlay Explained

An overlay happens when a tournament guarantees a prize pool and the buy-ins don’t cover it. The organiser pays the difference. Here’s how it worked out in Rozvadov:

Item	Amount
Guaranteed prize pool	€2,000,000
Entries × buy-in (505 × €3,000)	€1,515,000
Overlay (paid by organisers)	€485,000
Prize money per entry	≈ €3,960
Extra entries needed at €3,000 to hit the guarantee	≈ 162

Our calculation uses the gross €3,000 buy-in. Reports note the €485,000 is before staffing costs, so the real cost to King’s and the WSOP was higher.

For the players, that’s a big edge. Each €3,000 entry was effectively playing for about €3,960 in prize money, roughly 32% more than the buy-in, before any player skill comes into it. A pro who plays every event won’t often see that kind of value at this buy-in level. Anyone who skipped the event because “it’s only a Circuit stop” missed one of the best-value tournaments in Europe this autumn.

The Whole Festival Overlaid, Not Just the Main

Here’s what the biggest guaranteed events looked like when we compared gross buy-ins against their guarantees:

Event	Entries	Gross buy-ins	Guarantee	Shortfall (gross)	Winner
#13 €3,000 Main Event	505	€1,515,000	€2,000,000	€485,000	Vito Branciforte
#4 €1,000 Mini Main	702	€702,000	€1,000,000	€298,000	Daniel Knuth
#14 €350 Dream Maker	538	€188,300	€300,000	€111,700	Nikolay Tsanev
#9 €1,000 Mystery Bounty	405	€405,000	€500,000	€95,000	Yurii Zabrodotskyi
#16 €1,500 Super Circuit Championship	330	€495,000	€500,000	€5,000+	Ryan Carroll

Entries, guarantees and winners are from PokerNews. The gross and shortfall columns are our own arithmetic, before fees, so the actual overlays were larger.

Just these five events add up to almost €1 million in missed guarantees, which fits PokerNews’ description of a “potential seven-figure” total. The €5,000 PLO High Roller doesn’t appear in the published results at all, which suggests it didn’t run.

Why Did King’s Miss Its Guarantees?

Mostly scheduling. The inaugural WSOP Super Circuit Madrid ran during much of the Rozvadov festival, and the WSOP Circuit UK stop at Dusk Till Dawn in Nottingham was going on at the same time. PokerNews senior editor Matthew Pitt said the European Super Circuit events “cannibalized each other”. Mid-stakes European players had three WSOP-branded options in the same few weeks, and many picked Madrid or Nottingham instead.

The buy-in is the other factor. Past King’s Circuit Main Events cost €1,500–€1,700, and the Super Circuit doubled that:

Edition	Buy-in	Entries	Prize pool / GTD	Winner
2021 WSOPC	€1,700	912	€1,342,920	Andrea Ricci
2022 WSOPC	€1,700	808	€1,189,780	Feyzullah Karaarslan
Late 2025 WSOPC	€1,500	544	€1M GTD	Claudio Di Giacomo
Jan 2026 WSOPC	—	692	—	Vrakas
Nov 2026 Super Circuit	€3,000	505	€2M GTD	Vito Branciforte

Doubling the buy-in usually shrinks the field, and 505 entries is actually a decent turnout at €3,000. The problem was the guarantee. €2 million needed about 667 entries at full price. That’s more than most recent King’s Circuit Main Events have drawn, and those cost half as much.

What the Overlay Means for King’s Resort and Players

Expect some changes. After overlays like this, operators usually do some combination of three things: lower the guarantees, move dates away from competing series, or run more satellites so more players come in on cheaper tickets. If the Super Circuit comes back to Rozvadov in 2027, check whether the Main Event guarantee is still €2 million. A smaller guarantee wouldn’t mean the stop is in trouble. It would just mean the organisers adjusted to the actual numbers.

For players, there’s a practical lesson: follow the calendar, not just the brand. When several big series overlap in one region, the smaller stop is often where the overlays happen. Before you book travel, check registration numbers from the early flights. If Day 1A is light and the guarantee is big, that’s an argument for flying in for Day 1C.

King’s isn’t slowing down either. The WOLF Millionaire (€350, €1,000,000 GTD) runs November 11–16, followed by the German Poker Masters (€285 Main Event, €1,000,000 GTD) from November 20 to 30. Both have much lower buy-ins, so they’re a good test of whether the Super Circuit’s turnout was about the room or about the price.

If you want to see what the series looked like before it started, read our WSOP Super Circuit Rozvadov 2026 preview.

FAQs