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  • Eliot Hudon Brings Another Title to Canada From WPT® World Championship

Eliot Hudon Brings Another Title to Canada From WPT® World Championship

Eliot Hudon Brings Another Title to Canada From WPT® World Championship

Montreal’s Eliot Hudon was the fourth player from Canada to bag a WPT® title in the recent World Championship from Wynn Las Vegas after a $4.1 million Main Event win.

The epic WPT® World Championship is now complete and there is no other way to describe the inaugural series except as a roaring success. The $15 million Main Event guarantee, which looked optimistic early-on, turned out to be a gross under-estimate of the interest in the big game.

In the end, almost 3,000 entries paid their $10,400 buy-in fee for the game which meant the final prize pool was just shy of doubling the initial promise. In the end, the game collected $29,008,000 in total prizes with 371 players getting at least some share of that massive pool.

The big winner at the end of the day was Canadian Eliot Hudon who pocketed more than $4 million USD in the biggest score of his career by a mile. Before this past Championship, his biggest live score came from the 2021 World Series of Poker (WSOP) when he managed a top 100 finish in the Main Event for $113,800.

The win marked the second of his career, with the first coming just weeks ago. In Nov of this year, he bagged the top spot in the Playground Power Week Main Event at Playground Poker in Kahnawake on the outskirts of Hudon’s hometown of Montreal. That win was just shy of $60k USD though, so his $4.1 million score this week blew that out of the water.

Four Canadians Score Titles

Lina Niu. WPT World Championship Ladies Main Event Winner.
Lina Niu

In addition to Hudon, three other Canadians bagged a trophy in this series including Lina Niu who picked up her second big result in December with a win in the Ladies event.

Niu wasn’t the only player from north of the 49th parallel to pick up some Wynn-shaped hardware though. Constantinos Psallidas won a small one in the $600 NLH $50K GTD, which saw 310 runners and a guarantee-tripling prize pool of $161,200, while Sergio Grosso bagged the second biggest Canadian prize with $130,806 for winning the $1100 Seniors NLH $200K GTD. In another stellar showing, that game also more than tripled its guarantee with 708 entries for a prize pool of $690,300.

While most of the winners in the series came from the US, Canada’s four titles looks to be in second-place for national wins, which is a pretty strong achievement for a country of just 37 million people. That said, Canada’s proximity to the US, and the burning desire of Canadians to escape the winter weather to the fun and sun of Sin City likely contributed to a bloated field from north of the border.

Strong Results Across the Board

The series as a whole was can only be called a massive success. The Main Event clearly shone at the top of the tree with almost $30 million in total prizes, but most events not only beat their guarantees, but crushed them handily.

One of the earliest games, a $600 No-Limit Hold'em with $500k guaranteed set the standard. The game was one entry shy of 3,000 for $1,559,480 in total prizes, more than triple the original guarantee. Sean Banahan from Twin Falls, ID doubled his career earnings with a win in that one worth more than $135k.

Even mixed games saw massive interest in the series. On Dec 5, a $600 HORSE event ran with 261 entries. Going into the game, the guarantee was $50k, but the classic five-game mix ended up nearly tripling that with $134,415, a very respectable result for a HORSE ride.

Another big game that scored better than triple its guarantee was the multi-day $600 NLH $200K GTD. That game ran from Dec 5 to 7 with 1,243 entries and a total prize pool of $646,360. Gerard Morrell from Castle Rock, CO pocketed his second-biggest score with just over $100k for the win.

The best increase on guarantee came in the $3000 NLH $500K GTD. That game saw an astonishing 907 entries to boost the prize pool to nearly five times the guarantee with $2,494,250. Peter Cross from Los Angeles, CA took $429,406 for his first career win and biggest lifetime score.

It had never been done before, and going into the WPT® World Championship there were some questions about how the series would turn out. In hindsight, it’s clear that any worries were misplaced as a massive turnout made the 2022 World Championship a shining success.

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