Chance Kornuth Called for the Ace of Diamonds by Name. The Dealer Produced It.

Today's Big Question

What happened

On Day 4 of the CA$5,000 WSOP Super Circuit Main Event at Playground in Kahnawake, with 99 players left and blinds at 25,000, Daniel Negreanu opened to 50,000 from the hijack with the ten of diamonds and the ten of clubs. Chance Kornuth three-bet to 140,000 from the cutoff with the ace of clubs and the king of hearts. Negreanu jammed 725,000 and Kornuth called. The flop and turn came five of hearts, six of spades, five of spades, three of clubs, leaving Kornuth six outs and one card. He asked the dealer, out loud, for the ace of diamonds. The dealer supplied the ace of diamonds. Negreanu finished 99th for $14,500 and high-fived the man who had just ordered his elimination off a menu.

Why it matters

Negreanu has not won a WSOP Circuit ring since 2006 in Tunica, a drought now old enough to legally enter the tournament that ended it. He won his eighth bracelet this summer, which is the kind of resume that makes 99th place out of 2,844 read as a rounding error rather than a run. He had also spent Day 3 winning the identical race in the opposite direction, doubling with ace-king against pocket tens, so the deck ran the same experiment twice and reported a different result each time.

In the Spotlight

Jeju Ran Two $25,000 Tournaments at Once. Winning the Bigger One Was Worth $329,000 More.

What happened

Two $25,000 no-limit hold'em events at Triton Jeju II finished on September 8. Khoa Anh Ngo beat 210 entries and a $5,250,000 prize pool for $1,090,000 and his first trident trophy. He closed it on the eighth hand of heads-up play, limping the button with the eight of clubs and the five of spades. Anatoly Filatov check-shoved the flop with the queen of clubs and the eight of spades, Ngo turned two pair, and Filatov took $733,000 for second. Aliaksei Boika beat 131 entries and a $3,275,000 prize pool in the eight-max version for $761,000, ending it with top pair against a combination draw held by Philip Sternheimer, who took $516,000. Isaac Haxton finished third in Ngo's event for $515,000, raising his career total to $68.3 million and his seventh place on poker's all-time money list. Phil Ivey went out 34th in the same tournament, on the same day, in the same room.

Why it matters

Same buy-in, same casino, same afternoon, and a gap of 79 entries between them that turned into a gap of $329,000 at the top. This is what a super high roller series is: a schedule dense enough that the identical tournament runs twice concurrently, and the only variable anybody controls is which of the two lines they stood in. Ngo, who had never had a seven-figure score, now sits 19th in the Card Player Player of the Year standings. Boika, thirteen years into a live career, sits 86th.

The Explainer

He Started Playing Poker This Spring. His First Recorded Live Cash Was $51,000 in South Korea.

What happened

Reda Achnit of Morocco had no prior live tournament cashes on record. He picked the game up this spring, won an online freeroll on CoinPoker, and used it to enter the $25,000 eight-max at Triton Jeju II, where the other 130 entries included Michael Watson, Jesse Lonis, Artur Martirosian and Daniel Rezaei. Achnit outlasted all four of them, surviving to the final 15 before Seth Davies knocked him out in 14th place for $51,000. Davies is a CoinPoker ambassador, so the site ran the freeroll that put him in the field and then supplied the player who took him out of it.

Why it matters

The satellite has been poker's origin myth for twenty-three years, and the industry recites it at every opportunity. The modern version runs on a shorter clock. A man who did not play this game in March cashed a nosebleed in September without ever appearing in a $300 event in between. His $51,000 is more than Boika's eighth-place finisher took home in the same tournament.

Follow the Money

The WPT's Jacksonville Field Fell by 34, Then by 33. The Final Six Play Today.

What happened

The $5,000 WPT bestbet Scramble Championship drew 294 entries this year. It drew 327 in 2025 and 361 in 2024. First prize has tracked the field down the stairs, from $347,850 to $315,350 to the $294,900 on offer today, each figure including a $10,400 seat in the season-ending WPT World Championship at Wynn Las Vegas. Day 2 ended with 21 players and Caleb Powell bagging 1,785,000, or 119 big blinds. Six players are at the table in Jacksonville right now with blinds at 25,000 and 50,000, playing a live-streamed final table for a title on the same Mike Sexton Champions Cup that Nick Yunis lifted here two years ago.

Why it matters

Three data points do not make a trend, but they do make a line, and the line is losing thirty-something entries a year from a Main Tour stop in a state with no shortage of poker players. The tour has spent the same period adding festivals in Australia, Cyprus, Cambodia and Seoul. There is a version of the story where a $5,000 buy-in in Jacksonville is simply competing with more of everything, and there is a version where the number just goes down, and both versions produce the same schedule announcement.

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SEPT 8 Day 003 - The Home Ice Edition

The Biggest Prize Pool in WSOP Circuit History Is in Quebec and the Locals Are Not Sharing

Late registration closed on the CA$5,000 WSOP Super Circuit Canada Main Event at Playground in Kahnawake with 2,844 entries and a prize pool of CA$13,082,400, which is CA$3,082,400 past a guarantee that was already the largest ever offered in a Canadian poker tournament. Day 1A drew 851 entries by itself and Day 1C drew 830. Day 3 finished with Canadian Rayan Chamas on top of the displayed standings with 5,200,000 chips, up from the 825,000 he bagged out of Day 2A, which is a sixfold day and the kind of run that usually gets a nickname. William Givens of the United States is second on 4,000,000 and Jonathan Bussieres of Canada third on 3,400,000. Six of the ten leading stacks are Canadian. The man who led the field into Day 3, a Canadian listed by WSOP LIVE as Mario Lemieux, does not appear in the top ten that came out of it. Day 4 begins today, alongside a CA$25,000 Super High Roller starting at 3pm.

AlsoThe WSOP's Argument for Two New Festivals Is a Tournament That Has Not Finished Yet Read this brief →

The Best Result of ACR's $15 Million Week Belonged to Someone Who Entered the Wrong Tournament

SEPT 7

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