January 30-31, 2026
Years since JRB logged his first poker cash in a $145 Omaha Hi/Lo victory at Bell Gardens in LA.
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1ST
Jean-Robert Bellande
$1,500,000
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2ND
Rob Yong
$1,000,000
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3RD
Markkos Ladev
$700,000
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4TH
Pieter Aerts
$515,000
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5TH
Thomas Eychenne
$375,000
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6TH
Emilien Pitavy
$280,000
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7TH
Biao Ding
$230,000
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8TH
Gha Iakobishvili
$200,000
Jean-Robert Bellande notched a new high score after a hard fought final table in Cyprus this weekend, grabbing $1,500,000 for a win in the Onyx High Roller Championship at Merit Royal Diamond.
The one-time WSOP bracelet winner and ninth-place Survivor beat a field of 50 high-stakes players who all ponied up $100,000 for the privilege. The $5,000,000 prize pool was split among the top eight players, with good buddy Rob Yong playing runner-up to Bellande after a come-from-behind heads-up battle.
JRB survives early devastation
Bellande entered the final table with a chunky chip lead after he barreled through the final two tables of the tournament, but it crashed down early after Pieter Aerts bounced a miracle card to river a set and beat two pair in one of the first hands of the day. Aerts went from the second-biggest chip stack to the overwheming chip leader, so the blow to Bellande was enormous, and no one would have noticed if his day ended right there.
"I'm not any kind of world-class poker player, but I have fun," Bellande told Merit Poker after the win. "I was devastated when I lost the bulk of my stack."
But Bellande stood tall. Artur Martirosian popped the money bubble and the bustouts lined up right behind him. Gha Iakobishvili went in eighth and Biao Ding was right behind him in seventh, followed a short time later by France's Emilien Pitavy in sixth.
By now Yong was the one with the chip lead, and Bellande stayed alive with two crucial doubles through Aerts and Thomas Eychenne. Markkos Ladev would doubled through Eychenne a short time later, setting up the Frenchman for a fifth place finish. Aerts followed in fourth and Ladev in third to set up the Good Friends Showdown between Yong and Bellande.
"You see the way Rob and I go at each other," Bellande told Merit Poker after the win. "We have fun. I have hitched my wagon to whatever Rob is doing."
Yong started the endgame with the lead but an ill-timed bluff gave the advantage back to Bellande. A few hands later, Yong tried to move in with a pair of fives on a full board, but Bellande called with a pair of jacks to lock in the big score.
JRB's $1.5 million payday nearly doubles his previous best, a second-place finish in the 2015 Poker Player's Championship for $748,828. It also breaks a six-figure drought in that has been going since he picked up his first WSOP bracelet in the $5K Six-Max a week after that PPC.
Lead image courtesy of Merit Poker.
