Sweden’s ‘Mark Twin’ won the €555 Mystery Bounty Main Event at The Festival Weekend Riga on Saturday at Olympic Voodoo Casino, in partnership with OlyBet Poker, defeating Finland’s Mikko Heikkala heads-up to claim the €9,850 top prize plus mystery bounties. Björn Samuelsson took a second title of the weekend in the €200 NLH 7-2 Estonia Special, Kaspars Renga won the €350 Dealers Choice All PLO, and Lithuania’s Rytis Zizniauskas claimed the €200 NLH Big Bounty. A day of goodbyes and last hands, with some of the room already pointing toward The Festival Malta while others stayed for Sunday’s closing events.
- Read more: Scotty Nguyen Lights Up Day 2 as Renga and Samuelsson Win
- Read more: Three Champions Crowned at The Festival Weekend Riga Opening Day
- Read more: Riga, You’re Next: The Festival Weekend Arrives at Olympic Voodoo Casino September 10-13
- Read more: Your Guide to the 2026 OlyBet Showdown Riga Voodoo Autumn Edition (September 19-27)
‘Mark Twin’ Wins the €555 Main Event Mystery Bounty
The €555 Mystery Bounty Main Event drew 153 entries across three opening flights, with 19 players bagging into a Final Day that was all in the money from the first hand. The mystery bounty envelopes opened as each player was eliminated, with prizes ranging from €600 to €6,000 on top of the standard prize pool payouts.
Six Latvians reached the final table, and the home crowd had every reason to expect a domestic champion. The poker had other ideas. All six were eliminated before the money reached the final three, leaving a Swede, a Finn, and an Estonian to contest the closing stages. Dmitri Dudakov of Estonia went out in third for €4,740. Heads-up between Sweden’s ‘Mark Twin’ and Finland’s Mikko Heikkala produced the tournament’s final hand, with Twin taking the victory and €9,850 in prize pool money. Heikkala collected €6,555 as runner-up.
Twin entered the Final Day as chip leader with 658,000, the position he had held since bagging from Day 1A on Thursday, and parlayed that into the final victory of the trilogy of The Festival Weekends in the Baltics.
| Place | Player | Prize |
|---|---|---|
| 1st |  ‘Mark Twin’ | €9,850 |
| 2nd |  Mikko Heikkala | €6,555 |
| 3rd |  Dmitri Dudakov | €4,740 |
| 4th |  Juris Bonders | €3,700 |
| 5th | Vladislavs Petrovs | €2,880 |
| 6th | Viktors Čaikins | €2,250 |
| 7th | Kristaps Renga | €1,760 |
| 8th | Ņikita Žarovs | €1,430 |
| 9th | Juris Liepiņš | €1,150 |
| 10th |  Baptiste Caim | €960 |
| 11th |  Mykolas Guiga | €960 |
| 12th | Artjoms Skvarkovskis | €850 |
| 13th | Björn Samuelsson | €850 |
| 14th | Aleksandrs Krumins | €750 |
| 15th | Joris Serva | €750 |
| 16th | Matas Sketerski | €690 |
| 17th |  Andrzej Wanclaw | €690 |
| 18th | Raimonds Ozoliņš | €630 |
| 19th | Martynas Zaremba | €630 |
Björn Samuelsson Wins €200 NLH 7-2 Estonia Special
The €200 NLH 7-2 Estonia Special drew 24 entries for a €5,653 prize pool. Sweden’s Björn Samuelsson, who had already cashed in the Main Event, won his first title of the weekend here for €2,263, denying Teddy Bremseth, who came to Riga with Scotty Nguyen as part of a three-month European tour with Teddy.poker, his first victory in the city. Bremseth finished second for €1,580.
The 7-2 Estonia Special is The Festival Series’ most distinctive Hold’em variant. Standard No-Limit Hold’em rules apply throughout, but with two Estonian twists. The first is the 7-2 bonus: if a player wins the main pot at showdown holding 7-2 offsuit, every remaining player in the tournament pays them one big blind. Not just the players at that table, but every player still alive. Only offsuit 7-2 qualifies, and only winning the main pot outright triggers it. The worst hand in poker becomes a tournament-wide bounty.
The second twist is the INES Rule, named after Estonian artist INES and her song “Once in a Lifetime.” Once late registration closes, each remaining player receives a special marker. If they are eliminated before the money bubble, they can invoke INES, pay one additional buy-in, and re-enter with double the normal starting stack. One chance. One lifetime. Use it wisely.
| Place | Player | Prize |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | Björn Samuelsson | €2,263 |
| 2nd |  Teddy Bremseth | €1,580 |
| 3rd | Jari Porkka | €1,020 |
| 4th | Juho Härkönen | €790 |
Kaspars Renga Wins €350 Dealers Choice All PLO
The €350 Dealers Choice All PLO drew ten entries for a €2,945 prize pool and rotated through five formats across the session: PLO Hi-Lo 8, Big O, PLO4, PLO5, and PLO6. Latvia’s Kaspars Renga, who has accumulated more than $700,000 in live poker earnings per The Hendon Mob, took the title and €1,475. The heads-up was an all-Latvian affair between Renga and Eduards Rakuss.
Third place went to The Festival Series founder Martin “Franke” von Zweigbergk, his first cash of the festival, collected just in time before his departure for The Festival Malta. Franke had been firing bullets into side events throughout the weekend. The €590 third-place prize was the one that finally landed.
| Place | Player | Prize |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | Kaspars Renga | €1,475 |
| 2nd | Eduards Rakuss | €880 |
| 3rd | Martin “Franke” von Zweigbergk | €590 |
Rytis Zizniauskas Wins €200 NLH Big Bounty
Lithuania’s Rytis Zizniauskas won the €200 NLH Big Bounty, the day’s most-entered event with 57 players and €9,206 in total prizes: €656 in the standard prize pool and €8,550 in bounties at €150 each. The format concentrates value on eliminations rather than finishing position, so the table focused on hunting as much as surviving from the opening hand.
| Place | Player | Prize |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | Rytis Zizniauskas | €220 |
| 2nd | Steffen Toerrresdal | €146 |
| 3rd | Romāns Kučers | €100 |
| 4th | Janis Antons | €70 |
| 5th | Roberts Cibulis | €50 |
| 6th |  Demis Teunisse | €40 |
| 7th | Aleksejs Horohorins | €30 |
Sunday at The Festival Weekend Riga
Sunday is the closing day of The Festival Weekend Riga, a day of final hands and farewells. Some of the room has already packed for Malta. Those staying have two more events and a satellite to play. The €200 NLH Sunday Brunch at 1 p.m. comes with an added package to The Festival Tallinn 2026 (November 20-29 at Olympic Park Casino). A €30 satellite at 3 p.m. guarantees two €550 tickets directly into The Festival Tallinn Main Event. Win on Sunday in Riga, play the full Festival in November.
| Time | Event |
|---|---|
| 13:00 | Event #12: €200 NLH Sunday Brunch (incl. added package to The Festival Tallinn 2026) |
| 15:00 | Event #13: €30 Satellite to The Festival Tallinn Main Event (2 x €550 Seats GTD) |
And Then Riga Keeps Going
The Festival Weekend closes Sunday, but Riga doesn’t. The OlyBet Showdown Riga Voodoo Autumn Edition opens September 19 at this same Olympic Voodoo Casino, six days after The Festival Weekend ends. Nine days, 26 events, a €1,100 NLH Main Event, and a €555 NLH Championship. All coverage from The Festival Weekend Riga was published daily at poker.pro and at OlyBetEvents.com in partnership with OlyBet.
- Photos courtesy of Mairo Toom / The Festival Series
- Article originally produced at poker.pro.
