It Was a Christmas to Remember for Poker Playing Brits
Boeree and other British poker players had millions of reasons to be happy over the Christmas period.
Manchester’s Rob Sherwood turned a $1,000 satellite entry into $2.2 million in Las Vegas. © WPT on Flickr
Key Facts:
- 24-year-old Chinese player wins $6 million in Paradise.
- Boeree wins more than any other female in tournament history.
- Brit Paul Runcan takes €900,000 from Prague EPT.
- Englishmen Rob Sherwood and Chris Moorman are big WPT World Championship winners.
Ahead of Christmas, half of the world’s finest poker players spent two weeks in paradise – the World Series of Poker Paradise on Paradise Island in the Bahamas! Entering 2025, a liberal handful of players probably still live in a state of utopia.
Across 15 tournaments, the festival generated $142 million in prize money. The showstopper was the $25,000 entry ‘Super Main Event’ that featured a $50 million guarantee. Of its 1,978 entries, a 24-year-old Chinese player, Yinan Zhou, claimed the title and its $6 million prize.
Eight players won $1 million or more in the ‘Super Main’. Its final table featured players representing nine individual countries. Brazilian Marcelo Aziz finished runner-up (for $4.6 million); Italy’s Mustapha Kanit was third, and Liv Boeree, from the UK, took fourth.
LIV Boeree Is Now the Top Girl
Boeree’s result was worth $2.8 million, and it saw her enter the record books as the female player with the highest financial win from a poker tournament. The previous high mark, $2.74 million, belonged to China’s Wenling Gao, whose massive payday came in a 2020 online poker tournament.
Boeree now sits in 11th position in the all-time English money earners. Her breakthrough success came in 2008’s Ladbrokes Casino European Ladies Championship broadcast on Sky Sports. Amongst her fans is Elon Musk, who responded to the star’s X post where the Brit announced she had reached the Paradise Super Main’s final table.
GUYS…. I MADE THE FINAL TABLE!!!!
What is even happening. Words fail me. See you on the stream tomorrow
♠️♥️♣️♦️🚀🌔 ✨🌿🌍 pic.twitter.com/RlBKW3nErK
— Liv Boeree (@Liv_Boeree) December 19, 2024
Rapper Doesn’t Miss a Beat for $12m Win
Huge money sloshed around Paradise Island during the 13 days of fun and games in December. A remarkable 96 players took part in the $500,000 entry Triton Million. It fell to an Argentinian rapper, Alejandro Lococo, AKA Papo MC, who collected $12.07 million.
$5,000 was the cheapest tournament entry fee at the event. The two tournaments that came at that discount price were won by Nick Schulman – who beat 278 rivals to collect $145,000 in a Bounty Turbo – and China’s Lei Yu, who won $293,050 in a Hold ’em Deepstack event.
Six-Figure Scores for Brits Abroad
Concurrently, in Europe, 1,049 entries and 409 re-entries gave Prague’s EPT Main Event a €7.07 million pot. Portuguese player Pedro Marques took the top spot ahead of Brit, Paul Runcan. The pair collected €963,450 and €900,000 respectively.
British players enjoyed a hugely profitable run-up to Christmas. In addition to Boeree and Runcan’s exploits, two English players enjoyed outstanding success in Las Vegas at the $10,400 No Limit Hold’em WPT World Championship, where 2,392 entries created a $23.4 million prize pool.
Brighton’s Chris Moorman achieved a career-best cash when earning $2,095,300 for finishing fourth in this tournament in 2023. Twelve months later, he filed the same position after succumbing to a luckless two outer – with his pocket Queens losing out to pocket-10’s.
Manchester’s Rob Sherwood fared better and smashed his previous best by finishing runner-up. A three-way prizemoney levelling deal saw him pocket $2.2 million three days before Christmas. Sherwood’s deep run was particularly noteworthy as he had won his ticket into the event via a satellite at a top-ranked online poker site.
