The penultimate day of action at WSOP-C Calgary is in the books, with one ring event finishing out. The big news on the day, however, was the new record prize pool for the series as a whole, which looks to be pushing well past $6.5 million, compared to the previous record of a bit more than $5.8 million.
There are still beans to be counted from the final event of the series, but going into that event, which promises to have a big field with prizes of $100k or more, the series was already well over $6.4 million. While $6.6 million might be a bit out of reach (though it’s absolutely not impossible), prizes of more than $6.5 million for this series looks like a lock right now.
Romualdo Cusano Bags Freezeout Ring in First Live Win
- Entries: 430
- Prizes: $180,600
- Winner: Romualdo Cusano ($37,270)
One of the final events on the schedule for this year’s WSOP-C Calgary January played out on Sunday, and it was a big one. While many of the events on the schedule at WSOP-C beef up their entries with rebuys, that wasn’t an option this time around, as Event #17 was a Freezeout.
That means players had one shot at the big prize, but once their first stack was gone, the game was over for them. Even without the ability to rebuy, the game ended up with 430 players for prizes of more than $180k.
It took almost 17 hours at the tables to decide this one. The early action ran very quickly, with players getting into the money about 9 hours after they sat down for the first hands, and that quick pace continued until they got to three tables, about 11 hours after they started.
Then it slowed, taking nearly 8 hours to play down from the final three tables to a winner. They got to the final table at about 1:15 AM, with Josh Hopkins and Kayvan Payman leading the counts at the final table.
They played down to six left in about an hour, then it took another hour to lose Peter Amic in 6th place. Runner-up Mehdi Saeed was very short as they got to six-way play, and when Amic asked if he was going to play any hands, he joked, “No sir, I’m folding my way to fourth place.”
Payan then hit the rail for 5th place shortly after Amic, when he ran his pocket sixes into the queens of Hopkins and couldn’t get there. Richard Berenbaum followed him out after Saeed, who streams on Twitch under the name “GitAndSos”, crushed his jacks with queen-ten to leave him short.
That set up three-handed play, which took nearly two hours to finish out. Saeed was on his way up the counts, while Hopkins was moving the other direction. Both Hopkins and the winner, Romualdo Cusano, were short then, with Saeed sitting on most of the chips in play.
Hopkins was the short stack after Cusano got a double. Saeed had been shoving his big stack relentlessly, putting the other two at risk on nearly every deal, and eventually, Cusano decided he needed to call one off. He was behind with queen-seven into a suited ace-nine, but he smashed the flop about as hard as possible, with queen-seven-seven for the boat. Saeed was drawing dead by the turn, and Cusano got a big double.
That left Hopkins on the bottom, but he survived for about half an hour with the short stack. Once he busted for 3rd, heads up didn’t take long. Cusano was in the lead, with Saeed nearly on fumes, when they both found an ace about ten minutes after HU started.
Saeed was pipped with ace-eight into ace-nine, and despite the chop possibilities, the board ran clean for Cusano’s nine to play, and the game was over. This was Cusano’s first ring, and in fact, his first live win. The $37k Canadian score should add about 50% to his lifetime earnings once the exchange is factored in.
Final Table Results from Freezeout
| Place | Player | Prize |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Romualdo Cusano | $37,270 |
| 2 | Mehdi Saeed | $24,658 |
| 3 | Josh Hopkins | $16,683 |
| 4 | Richard Berenbaum | $11,545 |
| 5 | Kayvan Payman | $8,176 |
| 6 | Peter Amic | $5,928 |
| 7 | Tsunehisa Nishi | $4,404 |
| 8 | Aaron Wawryk | $3,354 |
| 9 | Abbas Moradi | $2,620 |
| 10 | Anthony Williams | $2,101 |
Crushing Records!
The big story from the final few days of action at WSOP-C here at Deerfoot Inn & Casino in Calgary is a new record for prizes over the whole series. Of course, that wasn’t the only record to fall this time around — the Mini Main Event earlier in the series crushed the previous field size record by more than 500 entries, topping out at 2,269 entries.
That was the first solid hint that this was going to be a series for the record books, but it was still early. While the one-day events certainly help pad out the prizes, it’s the big multi-games that really tell the tale, and all three of the big events with multiple starting flights set a record of some kind this time around.
After the huge turnout for the Mini Main, the Monster Stack also set a field-size record as the biggest Monster Stack ever here in Calgary. The Main Event came a few days later, and that event crushed the previous record for Main Event prizes by about $300k.
By the time the Freezeout prizes were in the kitty Sunday afternoon, the previous record for prizes, set back in Jan 2024, was already in the rearview mirror, though only by about $50k at that point. That was still with the High Roller and Closer prizes to come, and while the Closer is still yet to be included, once the $641k for the High Roller prizes were calculated in, the record prizes were more than $6.4 million.
With the closer likely to get $100k or more in prizes, this record series will likely come in at least $700k above the previous record, setting a new high bar for the Alberta poker market.
