VPT Sofia 2026: Aleksandar Nikolov Wins Warm-Up and High Roller as Main Event Passes 650 Entries

• Aleksandar Nikolov (Bulgaria) won two titles in four days. He took the €175 Warm-Up for €8,050, which includes a €550 Grand Final ticket, and then the record-breaking €700 High Roller for €18,675.
• Michael Tollervey won the €440 PLO Championship KO for €2,585.
• Plamen Yordanov won the Open Face Chinese (OFC) event for €1,420.
• €350 Main Event: 650 entries after four flights, with a fast flight and a turbo flight still to come. The final day is Sunday 8 November.
• Records: the High Roller drew 171 entries, up from 147 in 2024 and 152 in 2025. The Deepstack (161) and OFC (33) events also set new attendance records for Sofia.

Sofia has always been a popular stop on the Vamos Poker Tour. Players like having the five-star hotel and the casino in the same building, and Bulgaria is cheap to visit. This year it’s also turning into one of the tour’s busiest weeks. Sofia is the eighth and final regular stop of the 2026 season before the Grand Final in Lisbon. The festival has a €400,000 overall guarantee across ten events at Palms Royale Casino, and attendance is already beating previous years.

So far the week belongs to one player. Aleksandar Nikolov won the opening event and then won the week’s most expensive tournament as well.

Results So Far

Event	Buy-in	Guarantee	Entries	Winner	Prize
#1 Warm-Up	€175	€25,000	262	Aleksandar Nikolov	€8,050*
#3 VPT High Roller	€700	€70,000	171 (record)	Aleksandar Nikolov	€18,675
#4 PLO Championship KO (€200 KO)	€440	€15,000	41	Michael Tollervey	€2,585
OFC Progressive	€150	–	33 (record)	Plamen Yordanov	€1,420

*€7,500 in cash plus a €550 entry to the VPT Grand Final in Lisbon. The prize for the knockout (KO) event may not include bounty money collected during play.

Aleksandar Nikolov’s Double

Nikolov’s week started in the €175 Warm-Up. It drew 262 entries, a record for the Warm-Up in Sofia. He reached the final table as chip leader and stayed in front to win €7,500 plus a €550 seat in the Lisbon Grand Final. For most players, that alone would have made it a good week.

Two days later he won the €700 High Roller, which was a much tougher test. Its 171 entries made it the biggest High Roller field the tour has had in Sofia. The top 20 places were paid from the €70,000 guaranteed prize pool, and Nikolov beat a nine-player final table to win €18,675. Across the two events he has won €26,725 from €875 in buy-ins, roughly 30 times what he paid, before counting any re-entries.

Those results put him clearly on top of the festival’s MVP leaderboard. Britain’s Michael McCool is second and Spain’s Francisco Dopazo Paz is third. The MVP prizes are tickets to the next VPT festival: €1,050 for first, €700 each for second and third, and €350 for places four to ten. The Main Event and the Super High Roller are still to be played, so Nikolov has a good chance of adding that prize as well.

His double is unusual for another reason. Winning both the cheapest and the most expensive No-Limit event of the same week is rare on any tour, because the two fields play very differently. The Warm-Up is mostly recreational players hoping for a deep run on a small budget. The High Roller is full of regulars and travelling pros. Switching from one to the other within a few days takes real skill.

Tollervey Takes the PLO KO

On Thursday night, Michael Tollervey won the €440 Pot-Limit Omaha Championship. It was a knockout event, so €200 of each buy-in was set aside as a bounty on that player’s head. The event drew 41 entries and paid only the top five places from its €15,000 guarantee. Tollervey earned €2,585 for first.

Because €200 of every €440 went into bounties, the first-place prize looks small next to the buy-in. In a knockout event, the winner usually earns a large share of their money by knocking players out along the way.

The small field was good news for the players who entered. If roughly €240 of each entry goes into the regular prize pool, 41 entries add up to only about €9,840. That means the organisers would have had to add around €5,000 of their own money to reach the €15,000 guarantee. This extra money is called an overlay. Spotting events that are likely to have one is one of the easiest ways to find extra value at a live festival, and PLO side events at smaller stops are a good place to look.

Plamen Yordanov won the OFC Progressive for €1,420. Its 33 entries set another Sofia record. OFC is a niche game, so even a field that size shows the tour’s side events are building a loyal following.

Main Event: 650 Entries and Counting

The €350 Main Event is the main attraction at every VPT stop, and Sofia’s has a €200,000 guarantee. It started slowly on Tuesday, then the numbers climbed quickly as the weekend got closer.

Flight	Date	Entries	Running total
Day 1A	Tue 3 Nov	78	78
Day 1B	Wed 4 Nov	87	165
Day 1C	Thu 5 Nov	194	359
Day 1D	Fri 6 Nov	258	650
Day 1E Fast	Fri 6 Nov (evening)	33 at the last update, registration still open	–
Day 1F Turbo	Sat 7 Nov, 12:00	15-minute levels, today	–
Final Day	Sun 8 Nov, 14:00	Registration closed	–

Day 1D alone drew more players than the first two flights combined. That’s normal for festivals with several starting flights. Visitors fly in for the weekend, and local players wait until Friday, when they don’t have work the next morning. At €350 each, 650 entries already adds up to €227,500 in buy-ins, more than the €200,000 guarantee before deductions, with two more flights still to come.

A rule to know before you enter another flight

VPT uses a “better stack goes to Day 2” rule. If you finish more than one Day 1 flight with chips, only your bigger stack goes through to Day 2, and the smaller one is lost. So if you already finished Day 1C with a healthy stack, it rarely makes sense to play today’s turbo hoping to improve it. Only play a later flight if you busted or ended with a stack you’re unhappy with.

How Sofia 2026 Compares With Previous Years

VPT Sofia guarantees, year on year

Edition	Dates	Festival guarantee	Main Event guarantee	High Roller guarantee	PLO KO guarantee
2024	21–27 Oct	€300,000	€200,000	€40,000	€10,000
2025	6–12 Oct	€300,000	€200,000	Not published	€10,000
2026	2–8 Nov	€400,000	€200,000	€70,000	€15,000

VPT Sofia High Roller attendance

Year	Entries	Change
2024	147	–
2025	152	+3.4%
2026	171	+12.5%

The festival guarantee is up 33% on the previous two years. The High Roller guarantee has grown 75% since 2024, and this time the players came to match it: 171 entries is 16% more than in 2024 and the biggest High Roller field Sofia has had. The organisers have also added a €1,100 EPM Super High Roller on Saturday, with a €25,000 guarantee and €500 bounties.

The Main Event guarantee, though, hasn’t changed. The growth is all in the more expensive events, which suggests VPT is now bringing more serious travelling players to Sofia, not just local recreational players.

What’s Left This Weekend

• Saturday 7 November: Main Event Day 1F Turbo (12:00), the €1,100 EPM Super High Roller, and Day 1 of the €250 Mini Vamos (€25,000 guarantee, 18:30)
• Sunday 8 November: Main Event Final Day (14:00) and the Mini Vamos Final Day (15:00)

Practical Notes for Players

• Know what’s deducted. VPT’s terms keep back 1.5% of each prize pool for organisation, 2.2% for the festival’s MVP Ranking and 3.1% for the season-long “Vamos a Las Vegas” ranking. That’s 6.8% in total. Some of it goes back to players as ranking prizes, including a WSOP 2027 Main Event seat for the annual winner.
• Big prizes include a Lisbon ticket. In eligible events, any prize over €2,500 includes a €550 entry to the Grand Final. That’s why Nikolov’s Warm-Up prize was paid as €7,500 plus a ticket. If you can’t travel to Lisbon (23–29 November), check whether the ticket can be transferred before agreeing to split the prize money at a final table.
• Blinds are halved for heads-up and after a deal. That slows play down, so heads-up matches reward skill more than luck.
• Cheaper ways in. The tour runs online satellites for packages that include a hotel stay and a Main Event entry. There’s also a weekly €40 satellite that wins a €350 entry, and two of those can be combined to play the High Roller.
• Look for overlays. Small side events with fixed guarantees, like this week’s PLO KO, can pay out more than players put in. These are often the best-value tournaments on a festival schedule.

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