Player snapshot
- Full name: Mikita Badziakouski (also romanized Nikita Bodyakovskiy)
- Nationality: Belarusian
- Date of birth: February 6, 1992
- Hometown / base: Mozyr, Belarus (per PokerListings); plays the international high-roller circuit
- Live tournament earnings: $68,308,522 — The Hendon Mob, verified June 2026
- All-time money list: 4th (1st in Belarus)
- WSOP bracelets: 1 (2021)
- EPT titles: EPT Barcelona €100K Super High Roller — won twice (2018, 2022)
- WPT titles: WPT Big One for One Drop (2023); partypoker WPTWOC High Roller Championship (2020, online)
- Other major titles: Multiple Triton Series titles (ranked among Triton’s all-time top earners); Super High Roller Bowl Australia (2023)
- Online alias: fish2013 (PokerStars), HelicopterBen82 (Full Tilt)
- Playing style: Aggressive, study-driven high-roller specialist
- Sponsor / team: None confirmed (former partypoker ambassador, 2019–2022)
Who is Mikita Badziakouski?
Mikita Badziakouski is, by the numbers, one of the most successful tournament poker players who has ever lived: more than $68 million in live earnings and fourth place on the all-time money list, according to The Hendon Mob as of June 2026. He sits above Hall of Famers and household names. And yet, to most casual poker fans, his face and name would draw a blank. That gap — between towering results and almost no public persona — is the most interesting thing about him.
Where players like Daniel Negreanu built careers as much on personality as on cards, Badziakouski did the opposite. He let the results talk. A Belarusian who learned his trade in the online cash-game trenches under the alias “fish2013,” he turned up on the live high-roller scene, started winning seven-figure pots against the best players in the world, and largely declined to explain himself. For anyone searching “what is Mikita Badziakouski known for,” the honest answer is this: quietly and relentlessly beating the highest-stakes tournaments on earth.
This profile traces how a chess-obsessed kid from a small Belarusian town became poker’s most low-profile elite — and why, after more than a decade at the top, he is arguably playing his best poker right now.
Early life and path to poker
Badziakouski was born on February 6, 1992, reportedly in Mozyr, a town near Belarus’s southern border with Ukraine. By his own account on the partypoker blog, his path to the felt ran through other games first: chess as a young child, then years absorbed in card games, then a teenage detour into sports betting before poker pulled everything together. He has described poker as the ideal fusion of the two things that always gripped him — intellectual competition and gambling.
Crucially, he never did anything else. In interviews he has been candid that he started young, won early, and never held another job — his entire adult life has been spent at the poker table. That single-mindedness shows up in the career that followed.
His first documented live cashes came in 2010, at age 18, on the mid-stakes Russian Poker Tour circuit in Ukraine, in cities like Kyiv and Odessa. Those were modest results by the standards of what was coming. But behind the scenes he was already building a far bigger online bankroll, grinding high-stakes cash games on PokerStars as “fish2013” and on Full Tilt as “HelicopterBen82” — the foundation that would later bankroll his assault on the live high-roller world.
Career timeline and breakthrough
Badziakouski’s career splits cleanly into “before 2018” and “after.”
For his first several years, he was primarily an online cash-game specialist who dabbled in live events. His first six-figure live score came at EPT Monte Carlo in 2016, a sixth-place finish in a €50,000 Super High Roller. He was clearly talented, but not yet a name.
Then came 2018 — one of the great single-year runs in modern poker. In May he won a Triton Poker Series Super High Roller Main Event in Montenegro for roughly $2.5 million. A week later he finished fourth in the $300,000 Super High Roller Bowl in Las Vegas for $1.6 million. He then flew to Jeju, South Korea, and won the Triton Main Event for $5,257,027 — still the second-biggest live cash of his career. In August he added the EPT Barcelona €100,000 Super High Roller for €1,650,300. By season’s end he had banked over $12 million, second that year only to Justin Bonomo, and rocketed from outside the top 100 to the upper reaches of the all-time list.
The peak years kept coming. In November 2021 he claimed his first World Series of Poker bracelet, winning the $50,000 No-Limit Hold’em High Roller for $1,462,043 — beating Ren Lin heads-up at a final table that also included Negreanu, who finished third. In 2022 he returned to Barcelona and won the same EPT €100,000 Super High Roller a second time, for €1,979,220, this time defeating Poker Hall of Famer Erik Seidel in a marathon heads-up battle.
His career-best result arrived in December 2023, when he won the $1,000,000 WPT Big One for One Drop at the World Poker Tour World Championship at Wynn Las Vegas for $7,114,500, beating Mario Mosböck heads-up. Earlier that same year he had taken down the Super High Roller Bowl Australia for A$5,482,725. There has been no real dip to recover from — only a steady, almost monotonous accumulation of seven-figure scores. As of June 2026 he ranks fourth all-time and first among all Belarusian players, with more than ten times the live earnings of his nearest countryman.
Key titles and biggest results
| Event | Year | Finish | Prize | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| WPT Big One for One Drop ($1M buy-in), Las Vegas | 2023 | 1st | $7,114,500 | Career-best cash; beat Mario Mosböck heads-up |
| Triton Super High Roller Main Event, Jeju | 2018 | 1st | $5,257,027 | Breakthrough title; HK$2,000,000 buy-in |
| Super High Roller Bowl Australia | 2023 | 1st | ~A$5,482,725 | Another seven-figure 2023 score |
| Triton Super High Roller Main Event, Montenegro | 2018 | 1st | ~$2,499,184 | First Triton Main Event win |
| EPT Barcelona €100K Super High Roller | 2022 | 1st | €1,979,220 | Beat Erik Seidel heads-up |
| partypoker WPTWOC High Roller Championship (online) | 2020 | 1st | $1,062,730 | Deal struck with Jason Koon |
| EPT Barcelona €100K Super High Roller | 2018 | 1st | €1,650,300 | First of two Barcelona SHR titles |
| GGMillion$ Main Event (online) | 2026 | 1st | $1,755,815 | First GGMillion$ title, 1,325 entrants |
| WSOP Event #85, $50K NLH High Roller | 2021 | 1st | $1,462,043 | First and only WSOP bracelet |
| WSOP Europe €111,111 One Drop High Roller | 2017 | 3rd | ~$1,772,822 | Early signature deep run |
Collectively, the record reveals a very specific kind of player: a pure high-roller and super-high-roller specialist. Badziakouski rarely turns up in $1,000 fields. His earnings are concentrated in events with buy-ins from $25,000 up to $1 million, against the smallest and toughest fields in poker. He is not a one-hit wonder propped up by a single score, nor primarily a low-buy-in volume grinder — he is a final-table regular in rooms where almost everyone is world-class, which is the hardest place in poker to win consistently.
Playing style and strategic identity
Badziakouski’s table presence is famously understated — stoic, economical, and hard to read — which is part of why some outlets have reached for nicknames like the “Silent Assassin.” But the substance underneath the calm is aggression. Across his biggest wins, observers and tournament reporters have repeatedly described a player who accumulates chips early and applies relentless pressure, particularly once he holds a stack.
He is also a product of poker’s study era rather than its gut-feel past. He came up as an online cash-game theorist, and his game reflects deep preparation: a wide, balanced range in aggressive lines, paired with the discipline to make big, correct folds in high-pressure spots. He is equally comfortable in formats most live pros avoid — PokerNews crowned him the “Short Deck Poker King” after his dominance in the variant on the Triton circuit, and he has since added a partypoker Short Deck title in Cyprus.
What separates him from a generic “aggressive, study-driven pro” is his honesty about the business beneath the bravado. In a candid 2023 interview with GipsyTeam after his One Drop win, he explained the economics most players hide: like nearly everyone in $1 million buy-in events, he sells shares of his action to investors to manage risk, rather than firing his own full bankroll. He noted the relentless annual workload that pushes even elite players toward backing arrangements, and reflected that money won young never feels entirely real — which makes it easier to put at risk. It is the kind of clear-eyed framing rarely heard from a player at his level.
His read on his own results tends toward the modest. After winning his WSOP bracelet, he told reporters the gold meant less to him than to many of his peers, but allowed that “it feels great to win a high roller.” After his 2018 Barcelona breakthrough he waved off the win as running “pretty hot lately.” Whether that is genuine humility or simply a player who prefers numbers to narrative, it has become part of his signature.
Online poker and cash games
The online felt is where Badziakouski’s career began and where he remains a dominant force. As “fish2013” on PokerStars he was one of the most feared high-stakes cash-game players in the world for years, and his tournament results online are substantial in their own right — including a runner-up finish in the 2012 Sunday Million and a deep run in the WCOOP Super High Roller.
Beyond the felt
For most of his peak years Badziakouski wore the orange diamond of partypoker, joining its pro team in January 2019 alongside the likes of Jason Koon and Isaac Haxton. The role gave the famously quiet Belarusian a rare public platform — commentary appearances, streams, and the partypoker blog interviews that remain among the few windows into his thinking. He left the team in early 2022 as part of a wider roster cull, and as of mid-2026 he has no publicly confirmed sponsorship, despite his heavy presence on GGPoker.
True to form, he keeps his life away from poker almost entirely private. There is little verified public information about his family or personal affairs, and this profile will not speculate. What is documented is a player who, by his own description, has spent his entire adult life inside the game and shows no interest in being a personality outside it.
Current status and what to watch
Badziakouski enters mid-2026 firmly in elite form. His January GGMillion$ title opened the year, he banked $1,348,000 for third at Triton Jeju in March 2025, and he was among the names selected for the Triton Poker Invitational 2026, where rankings place him fourth on Triton’s all-time earnings list with around five series titles. There is no sign of a player slowing down or stepping back.
The thing to watch is whether the sport’s most invisible great finally gets his due. Sitting fourth all-time, he is within striking distance of the very top of the money list, and another One Drop-sized score could push him into the conversation reserved for names like Justin Bonomo and Bryn Kenney. The poker world already knows exactly how dangerous he is. Over the next twelve months, the open question is whether everyone else finally learns his name.
FAQ
Badziakouski has won $68,308,522 in live tournament earnings, according to The Hendon Mob as of June 2026, ranking him fourth on the all-time money list. That figure covers live events only; it does not include his substantial private online and cash-game winnings, which are not publicly documented.
He has one WSOP bracelet, won in 2021 in the $50,000 No-Limit Hold’em High Roller for $1,462,043. He beat Ren Lin heads-up at a final table that also featured Daniel Negreanu, who finished third.
He is an aggressive, study-driven high-roller specialist with a calm, hard-to-read table presence. He came up as an online cash-game theorist and is known for both heavy pressure and disciplined folds, as well as for dominating the Short Deck variant on the Triton circuit.
He is Belarusian, born on February 6, 1992, reportedly in the town of Mozyr near the Ukrainian border. He is the all-time live tournament earnings leader from Belarus by a wide margin.
Yes. He remains highly active in 2026, winning the GGMillion$ Main Event online in January 2026 for $1,755,815 and being selected for the Triton Poker Invitational 2026.
Almost exclusively. His career is built on high-roller and super-high-roller events with buy-ins from $25,000 up to $1 million, including the $1,000,000 WPT Big One for One Drop he won in 2023 for a career-best $7,114,500.
There is no reliable figure. Net worth for high-stakes pros is inherently speculative because cash-game and online results are private; one outlet, somuchpoker, has published an estimate of roughly $35 million to $45 million, but this should be treated as an estimate, not a verified fact. His verified live tournament earnings exceed $68 million.
He keeps his personal life almost entirely private, and there is no verified public information about a spouse or family. This profile does not speculate on undocumented personal details.