Player Profile: Bryan "PellePelle" Piccioli
Bryan Piccioli
Method of Qualification: At-Large Points (48th)
Piccioli barely squeaked into the top 50 points earners this season, and given a record that includes $4.5 million in tournament cashes and former world No. 1 status online, that won't be welcome news to the other qualifiers.
"Pellepelle" has done most of his damage in the higher buy-in events on the Circuit this year, cashing in five Main Events from November through February. Two were final-table finishes, with ninth place in Thunder Valley followed by a runner-up finish in Horseshoe Tunica a week later, worth $89K.
When it was time to put away the live reads and dust off the mouse for online play, Piccioli pocketed his first Circuit ring in Event #1: $200 No-Limit Hold'em Knockout during the February festival.
Piccioli also has a bracelet from a large-field event at WSOP Asia-Pacific back in 2013.
However, when it comes to WSOP success, he's undoubtedly best known for two Main Event runs. In 2017, Piccioli made the final table of the WSOP Main Event. There, he had a tough go of it on Day 9 and wound up with a sixth-place finish worth $1,675,000.
More recently, under the moniker "smbdySUCKme," he took a chip lead into the final day of the record-breaking GGPoker Main Event. With just 37 opponents left out of a field of 5,802, Piccioli had to stomach a 23rd-place finish as his solid stack melted away in rough back-to-back hands — first losing top two pair to a runner flush then having a standard button shove run into a bigger hand.
Jaunt to Mexico over, it's time for Piccioli to get back to work stateside, and his penchant for getting his best results in the biggest events seems tailor-made for the GCC.