‘Mark Twin’ Wins the €555 Mystery Bounty Main Event as Four Champions Crowned on Day 3 of The Festival Weekend Riga

‘Mark Twin’ Wins The Festival Weekend Riga €555 Main Event Mystery Bounty

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.

‘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.

Mikko Heikkala

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.

PlacePlayerPrize
1stSweden ‘Mark Twin’€9,850
2ndFinland Mikko Heikkala€6,555
3rdEstonia Dmitri Dudakov€4,740
4thLatvia Juris Bonders€3,700
5thLatvia Vladislavs Petrovs€2,880
6thLatvia Viktors Čaikins€2,250
7thLatvia Kristaps Renga€1,760
8thLatvia Ņikita Žarovs€1,430
9thLatvia Juris Liepiņš€1,150
10thFrance Baptiste Caim€960
11thLithuania Mykolas Guiga€960
12thLatvia Artjoms Skvarkovskis€850
13thSweden Björn Samuelsson€850
14thLatvia Aleksandrs Krumins€750
15thLithuania Joris Serva€750
16thLithuania Matas Sketerski€690
17thPoland Andrzej Wanclaw€690
18thLatvia Raimonds Ozoliņš€630
19thLithuania Martynas Zaremba€630

Björn Samuelsson Wins €200 NLH 7-2 Estonia Special

Björn Samuelsson

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.

PlacePlayerPrize
1stSweden Björn Samuelsson€2,263
2ndNorway Teddy Bremseth€1,580
3rdSweden Jari Porkka€1,020
4thFinland 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.

PlacePlayerPrize
1stLatvia Kaspars Renga€1,475
2ndLatvia Eduards Rakuss€880
3rdEstonia Martin “Franke” von Zweigbergk€590

Rytis Zizniauskas Wins €200 NLH Big Bounty

Rytis Zizniauskas

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.

PlacePlayerPrize
1stLithuania Rytis Zizniauskas€220
2ndNorway Steffen Toerrresdal€146
3rdLatvia Romāns Kučers€100
4thLatvia Janis Antons€70
5thLatvia Roberts Cibulis€50
6thNetherlands Demis Teunisse€40
7thLatvia 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.

TimeEvent
13:00Event #12: €200 NLH Sunday Brunch (incl. added package to The Festival Tallinn 2026)
15:00Event #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.

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Jason Glatzer

Jason Glatzer is a seasoned poker player, journalist, commentator, and content creator with over a decade of experience in the industry. His journey in poker began in the 1980's playing for pennies on kitchen tables and enjoying stud game in the 1990s in Atlantic City, before transitioning to online poker in the early 2000s. Glatzer's career in poker media took off at PocketFives, which led to opportunities with PokerNews and other prominent poker media outlets. Throughout his career, he has covered major poker events, and has contributed to various poker publications as a writer, editor, and live reporter.