Lou Garza grabbed his second bracelet with a come-from-behind win in Event #14: $25,000 High Roller PLO/NLH Mixed. And he had to do it against one of the all-time tournament crushers, Ben Lamb.
The $25k half & half saw 245 entries for prizes of $5,757,500, with Garza’s first place share at $1,302,233. While the event, part of the 2025 World Series of Poker at Horseshoe and Paris, Las Vegas, was scheduled to finish in three days, they had to come back for an impromptu Day 4 when five players were still left late on Day 3.
This second bracelet for Garza came two years after his first win in 2023. He said in the post game interview with PokerNews that PLO is the game he plans to focus on this year, and he plans to focus.
After his first win in 2023, when he binked the $10k PLO Championship bracelet, he famously proposed to his then-fiancée. When he was asked if he had anything special like that planned for #2, he said no, saying he plans to just focus on the poker this time around.
2025 WSOP Event #14: $25,000 High Roller PLO/NLH Mixed Final Table Results
| Place | Player | Country | Prize |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Lou Garza | United States | $1,302,233 |
| 2 | Ben Lamb | United States | $868,140 |
| 3 |  Chongxian Yang | China | $598,285 |
| 4 |  Robert Cowen | United Kingdom | $421,524 |
| 5 | Brandon Mitchell | United States | $303,773 |
| 6 | John Pannucci | United States | $224,034 |
| 7 | Zhargal Tsydypov | United States | $169,183 |
| 8 |  Youness Barakat | Italy | $130,896 |
| 9 | Michael Moncek | United States | $103,821 |
2025 WSOP Event #14: $25,000 High Roller PLO/NLH Mixed Final Table Recap
It was quite a run for Garza in Event #14. Not only did he have to battle the 2011 WSOP Player of the Year in Lamb, but Lamb was also the chip leader for most of the final day of play. Lamb started the day with a big lead, and when they got heads up, Lamb was up 4:1.
Garza credits much of his success with the support he got from friends and family on the rail. “It means everything to have family and close friends here supporting me,” he said after the game.
Garza played the heads up as if he “had nothing to lose.” “Once we got heads up, I knew I had to flip the switch, get aggressive, and just go for it with nothing to lose.”
It didn’t take long to play down to the final two players. Five players came back for the final day, but the two chip leaders made quick work of the short stacks. Garza sent two of the final three players to the rail, putting him at slightly less of a disadvantage.
But Lamb still got to the final phase with the most chips, by a margin of about 4:1. Garza ground it up once they got heads up, grabbing the lead after he got value from two pair, then a wheel.
While Garza says he loves PLO, and said “I’ll play more of the bigger PLO events coming up”, on this occasion it was the two-card game that favoured him, while Lamb seemed to be running best with four cards, and the PLO action chipped Lamb back up to a 2:1 lead.
The momentum shifted after Garza got an audacious bluff through in hold’em, forcing Lamb to fold top pair on a soaking wet board, then showing the nine-high bluff. That put Garza about even again, and that’s when the four-card game started to work for Garza.
He check-raised a turn with trips after Lamb double-barreled, forcing a fold and leaving Lamb short. From there it was all Garza, and the game ended in storybook fashion when Lamb had 10 big blinds and woke up with king-ten. He shoved, but Garza squeezed the rockets and snapped it off. While it was a bit of a sweat as always, the aces ultimately held for Garza’s second bracelet over some very tough competition.
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* Hands and photos courtesy of PokerNews and WSOP
