Alessio La Francesca has turned one WSOP bracelet into two in barely a fortnight, winning the $10,000 Heads-Up No-Limit Hold’em Championship during the closing stretch of the 2026 WSOP Online series.
The Albania-based Italian entered September without a bracelet. He now has two after following his $316,037 GGMasters Freezeout victory with one of the toughest titles available online, a heads-up championship carrying a $10,000 buy-in and $352,000 for the winner.
It is a remarkable late-series double in a WSOP Online schedule featuring 33 bracelets. La Francesca’s first came on September 14. His second arrived only two weeks later, turning a breakthrough month into something considerably bigger.
La Francesca Wins the $10K Heads-Up Championship
The heads-up event had already been reduced to four players by September 27. La Francesca was drawn against Alexey Borovkov in one semifinal, while Roman Pleshuv and Aliaksandr Shylko contested the other side of the bracket.
All four semifinalists had locked up at least $117,000, but the title match carried the much larger prize: $352,000 and a WSOP bracelet. PokerNews confirmed on September 28 that La Francesca finished the job and claimed his second bracelet of the 2026 online series.
Heads-up championships are a very different problem from standard multi-table tournaments. There is nowhere to wait for a better seat or softer table, ranges widen dramatically and every opponent has the chance to adjust directly to what you are doing. Winning a $10,000 version means surviving a succession of one-on-one matches where a single opponent is the entire tournament.
From No Bracelets to Two in 14 Days
The speed of La Francesca’s rise is what makes this result stand out. On September 14, he defeated 1,514 entries in the $1,500 GGMasters Freezeout Championship for $316,037, his first bracelet and a $30,000 WSOP Paradise Super Pass.
That victory came after a near miss at the 2025 WSOP Europe festival in Rozvadov, where he finished 11th in the €2,000 No-Limit Hold’em Monsterstack. Twelve months later he finally broke through, beating Finland’s Elias Suhonen heads-up after a final table that also included Patrick Brooks and Marty Mathis.
Now the first bracelet no longer looks like the end of a chase. It looks like the start of an extraordinary fortnight. Winning a large-field freezeout and then a $10,000 heads-up championship also shows two very different tournament skill sets.
WSOP Online Reaches Its Final Stretch
La Francesca’s second title lands as the 2026 WSOP Online festival approaches its September 29 finish on GGPoker. The series has already produced enormous scores, including Andrii Novak’s $3.93 million Main Event victory, while the final bracelets are now being decided.
For La Francesca, though, September has already delivered more than most players manage across an entire career. Two weeks ago he was still chasing bracelet number one. He will leave the series as a two-time WSOP champion, with more than $668,000 in winner’s prizes from those two victories alone and a seat waiting in the $50 million guaranteed WSOP Paradise Super Main Event.
The second bracelet also changes the way his first should be viewed. The GGMasters win proved he could close a huge field. The $10,000 Heads-Up Championship has now shown he can do it again when the format strips the game down to one opponent at a time.
