“I know that my kids will love the trophy!”
Raul Mestre is one of the newest sponsored PokerStars Ambassadors from their growing roster of Spanish players. A full-time player and family man from Spain, he is a multi-faceted player with enough tournament success to boast a seven-figure Hendon Mob profile.
But he’d be the first to tell you that more than anything, he’s a cash guy.
“I’m much more familiar with very deep-stacked poker, not even normal deep stack poker. So for me, the format was very new.”
Unfamiliar territory
In fact, when PokerStars said that it’d be a good idea for him to accept an invite as a new ambassador to come to Paris and play a live version of their Spin & Go Championship event, he was reluctant at first, admitting that he didn’t have any experience with the format. But that didn’t stop him from showing up in Paris and mowing down the field to claim the 2026 Spin & Go Championship Live trophy.
The eventual champ was unfamiliar with the online format before shipping the big prize, but the Spin & Go is a simple three-handed contest. All three participants register for the same entry fee and then a wheel is spun to decide the prize pool that's being played for. Every spin is a minimum of double the buy-in but many spins are 3x-10x, and a jackpot spin can be worth 1000x the buy-in or far more, even up to a $1,000,000 at certain buy-in levels.
The 81 qualifiers arrived on Monday to play down to a field of nine for Tuesday's finale. Eventually, the final live three-handed battle saw Mestre dominate with a sizable rail of other Spanish players screaming from the sidelines with every pot pushed in his direction. By the time the last card fell, Raul had amassed a total of €92,000 through the spins in the five matches that he won.
Check out the full broadcast:
Images courtesy of Manuel Kovsca/Rational Intellectual Holdings, Ltd.
