Nicky P Breaks Through at ARIA: Palma Beats Mateos Heads-Up for His First PokerGO Tour Title as Poker Masters Rolls On

LAS VEGAS

Nicholas Palma has waited a long time for a win that matches the size of his personality, and on Wednesday at the PokerGO Studio inside ARIA Resort & Casino, he finally got one. The 37-year-old from New Rochelle, New York — known across the poker world as “Nicky P” — beat Spain’s Adrian Mateos heads-up to win Event #2 of the 2026 Poker Masters, a $10,500 No-Limit Hold’em tournament that drew 84 entries and built an $840,000 prize pool. The victory paid $235,200 and delivered Palma his first PokerGO Tour title.

The Poker Masters is one of the anchor stops of the fall high-roller calendar in Las Vegas. The 2026 edition runs October 12–23 at the PokerGO Studio at ARIA, with 10 events and buy-ins ranging from $10,000 to $50,000. Event #2 sat at the accessible end of that schedule, and it still produced a final day worthy of the series: five players came back to settle the title, and the two who survived to the end were the chip leader and the man chasing him.

A Final Day That Started With Mateos in Front

Mateos returned for the final day as the chip leader, with Palma second in chips. Behind them, Michael Berk sat third, David Coleman fourth, and Nicholas Seward fifth as the short stack. The eliminations then fell in almost exactly the order the counts predicted. Seward went out fifth for $58,600, Coleman followed in fourth for $79,800, and Berk’s run ended in third for $109,200, leaving Palma and Mateos alone with the trophy in sight.

The rest of the money places had been settled the day before. Christopher Par finished sixth for $42,000, Sam Laskowitz seventh for $33,600, and Jesse Lonis eighth for $33,600. Matthew Wantman (ninth, $25,200), Event #1 winner Myles Mullaly (10th, $25,200) and Victoria Livschitz (11th, $25,200) also cashed, with Sam Soverel rounding out the paid places in 12th for $21,000. For Lonis and Laskowitz, the cashes were their second in as many events to open the series.

Two Hours of Heads-Up, Settled on the River

What followed was the kind of heads-up match the PokerGO Studio was built to televise. Palma and Mateos played for more than two hours, with the chip lead changing hands several times. Neither man gave the other a cheap path to the title, and the match stayed live deep into the evening before one hand finally ended it.

On that last hand, Mateos moved all in holding ace-nine, and Palma called with ace-six suited — behind, and needing help. The board paired both players’ aces while opening a path for Palma: an ace, a seven and a five, then a four on the turn that gave him a straight draw. The river brought a three, completing Palma’s straight and ending the tournament. Mateos, who had led the final day from the start, collected $151,200 as the runner-up. Palma, wearing a Scarface-themed shirt through his run, had his breakthrough.

The Biggest Year of a Long Grind

The result lands differently when you know the road behind it. According to Card Player, Palma has recorded more than 400 career tournament cashes and over $5.1 million in earnings — the profile of a grinder who has been cashing for years without a signature televised title. He won his first World Series of Poker bracelet just over a year ago, in an online $2,000 progressive knockout event, and 2026 has turned into the biggest year of his career by a wide margin.

Remarkably, his three largest career scores have all come this year. Before Wednesday, they included a fourth-place finish in the $3,500 BetMGM Championship worth $431,180 and a third-place finish in a $5,000 live bracelet event worth $326,136. The $235,200 he won at ARIA is not the largest check of his life — but a first PokerGO Tour title, won heads-up against one of the most feared players alive, on a streamed final table in Las Vegas, carries a weight the bigger checks do not.

The Man Across the Table

The opponent adds to the size of the achievement. Mateos is a six-time WSOP bracelet winner who, four months ago, became the youngest player ever to reach six bracelets by winning the $250,000 Super High Roller for $4.3 million. Beating a player of that caliber is never a formality, and doing it across a two-hour heads-up battle — after starting the day chasing him — is the sort of result that changes how a player is introduced from now on. Mateos did not leave empty-handed, either: second place paid $151,200, and his week at ARIA was far from finished.

What the Win Does to the Purple Jacket Race

Every Poker Masters event is also a step in a series-long points race. Palma’s win earned him 235 PokerGO Tour points, which put him second in the race for the Purple Jacket at that moment, behind only Myles Mullaly — the Event #1 winner, who took $218,400 in the opener and added a cash in Event #2 to stay in front. The player who leads the standings after all 10 events wins the Purple Jacket and a $25,000 PGT Passport, and the points also count toward the season-long PGT leaderboard, where the top 40 eligible players qualify for the season-ending PGT Championship.

The race has already moved since Palma’s win. Joey Weissman took Event #3, topping a field of 78 entries in another $10,500 No-Limit Hold’em event to win $218,400 from a $780,000 prize pool and claim his fifth career PGT title, beating Daniyal Gheba heads-up; Gheba earned $140,400. That result pushed Weissman into second place in the Purple Jacket standings, with Mullaly still in front and Palma now third — a reminder that at the Poker Masters, the leaderboard can be rewritten every single night.

Seven Events Still to Come at ARIA

The series runs through October 23 at the PokerGO Studio, and the buy-ins climb as the week goes on, toward the $50,000 end of the schedule. Palma will be in those fields with a new line on his résumé and a live shot at the jacket, and Mateos — who has already sandwiched a runner-up finish between deep runs — remains one of the most dangerous players in the room. For Las Vegas poker fans, it is a full week of the highest-stakes tournament poker in the country, staged a few steps off the casino floor at ARIA.

Palma’s win is the headline of the series so far, though: a 37-year-old New Yorker with 400-plus cashes, finally holding a PokerGO Tour trophy after outlasting the chip leader, the field, and a river card that had to arrive for any of it to happen. Keep up with everything else happening in town in our Las Vegas weekend guide, catch up on the Golden Knights in our recap of Mark Stone’s hat trick against Calgary, and browse the full news index on Previously.