2025 WSOP: Ryutaro Suzuki is the First WSOP TORSE Winner

A total of 522 entries showed up for the first-ever bracelet event in TORSE, a variation on the HORSE rotation that replaces the opening hold ’em round with a round of deuce to seven triple draw. That put nearly $1.4 million into the prize pool for the 93rd event in the 2025 World Series of Poker at Horseshoe and Paris, Las Vegas.

When the dust settled, the inaugural bracelet went to Japan’s Ryutaro Suzuki, picking up his second bracelet with a win that will put him in the books as the first-ever winner of the format on WSOP felt. As he told PokerNews after the win, his summer to date had been pretty rough.

“I’ve been playing a very full schedule and I was really tired, but in the end I was able to achieve my goal,” he said in the post-game interview. In part, he was tired after playing the whole summer with minimal results. Prior to the bracelet win, he’d booked a couple of five-figure scores this summer, plus five more smaller cashes, but his summer had been pretty underwhelming for him up to this game, which he told PokerNews he registered knowing it was the last game he planned to play this year.

Event #93: $3,000 T.O.R.S.E. Final Table Results

PlacePlayerPrize
1Japan Ryutaro Suzuki$273,386
2United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland Toby Lewis$178,427
3Japan Koji Fujimoto$119,108
4United States of America Matthew Rosen$81,357
5United States of America Dave Stann$56,892
6United States of America Sterling Lopez$40,753
7United States of America Lucas Johnson$29,921

Event #93: $3,000 T.O.R.S.E. Final Table Recap

Japan’s Ryutaro Suzuki is no stranger to mixed game success. He picked up his first bracelet in 2023 in the 9-game mix here in Vegas for what was then the biggest score of his career, but bracelet #2 may well be a bit more special. Not only did it bump up his personal best to nearly $275k for total earnings of more than $800k now, but he did it in the very first TORSE event to award a bracelet.

Sixteen players were back for the final day of action in this one, with Suzuki bagging the second stack to start the day. Before the first break, the field was down to 11 remaining before play slowed a bit.

During the slower play, Suzuki found the chip lead over start-of-day leader David Prociak. Prociak couldn’t find momentum on the final day, bubbling the final seven for $22,531.

Suzuki was a big leader to start the final table, and they got down to four fairly quickly as Lucas Johnson, Sterling Lopez, and Dave Stann took the first three pay spots from the FT. During the four-way play, Suzuki relinquished the lead to Toby Lewis as the eventual winner hit a downswing and dropped below 1 million chips, at risk of busting early.

He was able to find a big double-up against his fellow Japanese player, Koji Fujimoto, and he followed that up by getting them three-ways after sending Matthew Rosen home in 4th. Lewis maintained the lead against his two Japanese competitors, with about 2/3rds of the chips in play at one point.

Suzuki sent his countryman home in 3rd in triple draw to get them heads up, then found his momentum against, pipping Lewis’ 8 in a deuce hand. Lewis got it back in stud, then Suzuki reupped it again in deuce. That pattern continued a bit with Lewis chipping up in stud play and Suzuki ruling the deuce play.

As the blinds got huge, Suzuki was on his way out, but got another big deuce double with an 8, followed by a few other smaller pots to retake the lead. It all ended in razz with Lewis’ final chips getting in the middle drawing to a 9, but his Japanese rival spiked an 8 low on seventh street to leave the Brit dead in second place.

More from WSOP 2025

* Hands and photos courtesy of PokerNews and WSOP

In This Series

Show all 93 articles

Share this article

Link copied!

About the author