Some absolute legend from Austria just turned his online grinding skills into a $10 million payday, and honestly, we've never been more inspired to fire up PokerStars at 3 AM.

Bernhard Binder, a 27-year-old who was primarily known as an online player, just shipped the WSOP Paradise Super Main Event — the largest guaranteed poker tournament in history — for a cool ten million dollars. His previous lifetime live tournament earnings? $328,000.

He just 30x'd his entire career in one tournament.

The Quick Hit

• First place: $10,000,000 and a WSOP gold bracelet
• The field: 2,891 entries in the $25K buy-in event
• Prize pool: $72,275,000 (crushed the $60M guarantee)
• Final hand: Binder's A8 held against Jean-Noel Thorel's KQ

The Final Table Was Stacked

This wasn't some soft field either. Binder had to navigate a final table that included:

• French billionaire Jean-Noel Thorel (2nd - $6M)
• Belarmino De Souza (3rd - $4M)
• Terrance "TJ" Reid (4th - $3M)
• Eric Wasserson (5th - $2.35M)
• Natasha Mercier (6th - $1.8M)

When you're heads-up against a literal billionaire and you still take it down, that's the kind of energy we need going into 2026.

The Winning Hand

With blinds at 8M/16M, Thorel opened to 58 million on the button with K♦Q♠. Binder looked down at A♣8♣ in the big blind and shipped it. Thorel called off his stack, the board ran out 9♦6♣2♥3♠8♠, and Binder paired his eight on the river to seal the deal.

Sometimes you just need to run good at the right time. And brother, Binder ran like the sun.

The Prediction That Came True

Here's the wild part — three-time Triton Poker champion Mario Mosböck apparently called this before the tournament even started. He said Bernhard Binder was "probably one of the best players at the moment."

When your poker homies are calling your shot before a $10 million score, that's when you know you're running well in life, not just cards.

What This Means for Online Grinders

Every degen sitting in their apartment playing $25 tournaments at 4 AM just got a shot of pure hopium injected directly into their veins. Binder wasn't some circuit regular with millions in cashes. He was an online pro who took a shot at a massive live event and ran through the entire field.

The dream is alive.

The Bottom Line

Bernhard Binder walked into the Atlantis Paradise Island casino as a relatively unknown online player and walked out as a WSOP bracelet winner with $10 million in his pocket. That's a 30x increase on his lifetime earnings in a single night.

If you're an online grinder reading this at 2 AM, keep chasing it. Sometimes the shot you take is the one that changes everything.

Now somebody get this man a celebratory drink. He fucking earned it.