The Spade for Francesco
Coverage of the Mini Main Event (tag: poker)
A fast-paced and thrilling finale to the €200 Mini Main Event at the 2026 Belgian Poker Challenge. Just over two hours of poker brought the tournament to the final head-to-head, with two players from Liège reaching an agreement to split €8,400 each. It took 44 heads-up hands for Francesco Lauria to come back with a pair of 8s after going all-in against Roman Langner’s merguez. Roman had lost King-Queen to Ace-6 of diamonds about twenty minutes earlier; he failed to double up… So it was an Italian who triumphed over a Belgian in this field of 384 entrants. The pair took the lion’s share of a prize pool of €61,055, shared amongst the last 55 survivors of a three-day tournament that concluded with a live stream! 
| Place | Player | Winnings |
|---|---|---|
| Winner | Francesco Lauria | €8,400 |
| 2nd | Roman Langner | €8,400 |
| 3rd | Eleftherios Korexenidis | €4,650 |
| 4th | Rachid Sekkai | €3,600 |
| 5th | Eddy Sebastianutti | €2,800 |
| 6th | Nadim Hage Ali | €2,200 |
| 7th | Erik Beyer | €1,750 |
| 8th | Ismail El Gueddari | €1,480 |
| 9th | Florian Moreno | €1,260 |
| 10th | Marco Ferrian | €1,070 |
| 11th | Luigi Hubert | €1,070 |
| 12th | Jean-Baptiste Di Vaira | €920 |
| 13th | Olivier Lacour | €920 |
| 14th | Joao Ribeiro Bacelar | €800 |
| 15th | Ben Guediche | €800 |
| 16th | Nasser Abdouni | €705 |
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