Canada has its first World Series of Poker (WSOP) gold bracelet of 2017! After finishing runner-up in the tag team event just seven days ago, Montreal native Pablo Mariz returned to his second 2017 WSOP final table and won Event #20: $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em – MILLIONAIRE MAKER for USD $1,221,407. Over $1.6M Canadian!
Mariz topped a monster-sized field of 7,761 runners en route to his first career win and eighth career WSOP cash. Previous to this year’s World Series, Mariz had just USD $89,460 in total career live-recorded tournament earnings.
Mariz’s previous best cash came with his second place score of $46,537 in the WSOP Event #10: No-Limit Hold’em Tag Team just last week, playing his best friend and partner David Guay. After the final card had been laid Mariz celebrated with Guay and told the WSOP, “We come here every year, grinding small events hoping to hit something big and we finally did! I think we are going to be staying the rest of the summer, at least until the Main Event is over. I’m going for WSOP Player of the Year now.”
Coming into the final day of play with the third smallest stack, Mariz quickly vaulted up the leaderboard, quadrupling his stack by the first break and then busting the start-of-day chip leader to almost double again and take a commanding lead.
Mariz went on a tear to start the unofficial final table busting both the 10th and ninth place finishers. Once down to six, Mariz continued his run disposing of the sixth and fifth positions before losing the chip lead three-handed.
The chip lead swung back-and-forth with Mariz flipping between the big stack and the shortest stack a couple times. Once heads-up, Mariz got it in real bad with pocket threes against the pocket aces of his heads-up opponent Dejuante Alexander. Luckily, Mariz spiked a three and took the lead.
The two played for another twenty hands with Alexander retaking the lead after some doubles of his own. Finally, on the 161st hand of the final table, Mariz had Alexander all-in and at risk with queen-jack against Alexander’s ace-three. Alexander was able to fade to the river but a queen fell on the final card and Mariz sealed his victory.
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