Canada has now won its second bracelet after Jason Duong had a stellar week, coming back from a big deficit to win Event #33: $1,500 Limit Hold’em. He and runner-up Adam Tyburski battled for about 2.5 hours heads up before it was finally decided.
In other Canadian news from the 2025 World Series of Poker at Horseshoe and Paris, Las Vegas, Greg Mueller and Daniel Negreanu look to be on a bracelet mission this year. Both have been going deep in multiple events so far this series — both players just made it to the final two tables of the $10k Deuce Championship, for example. This week, after cashing the Deuce together, Negreanu has found a bag in the $100k High Roller while Mueller bagged a top ten stack in the $1,500 HORSE after the opening day.
Alberta’s winningest player, Thomas Taylor, also found a day 1 bag in the little HORSE. He bagged less than Mueller on Day 1, but after Mueller busted in 44th place on Day 2, Taylor grinded his stack up to 5th in chips going into Day 3. Matthew Morin and Shawn Buchanan also came close to Canadian bracelets as they both made the final four of Event #31: $800 No-Limit Hold’em Deepstack for $172k and $128k, respectively.
Jason Duong is Canada’s Second Winner from 2025
Canada’s bracelet count is up to 2 for 2025 now after Jason Duong staged an epic comeback win in Event #33: $1,500 Limit Hold’em. There were 491 entries in the game for prizes of $651,802, with Duong getting $130,061 for the win.
Duong was in for a gruelling heads-up match against the American Tyburski. He was going to be facing an American heads-up, no matter what, since Duong stood as the lone non-American at the final table. He came into the final day as the smallest stack with just six big bets to his name, but that was enough to take it down.
They were virtually even to start the end phase of the game, with about a single big bet between them. It started badly for the Canadian as he soon found himself near the felt with two big bets remaining, but he spun that up again to get back to even.
That’s when the tide turned in favour of the Burnaby native, and he chipped away at Tyburski until the win. It’s probably no surprise that Duong’s first bracelet came in a fixed limit event — Limit poker is a bit of a specialty of his, as he said to PokerNews after the game that he enjoys “seeing more flops, turns, and rivers”, something that limit hold’em provides an abundance of.
Taylor on the Verge of First Bracelet?
Thomas Taylor leads three Canadians moving into Friday’s final day of play in Event #39: $1,500 H.O.R.S.E. Taylor bagged up the 5th place stack after two days of play, with Ari Engel also finding a top-ten bag, and Alex Livingston bagging one of the shorter stacks of the 18 remaining bags.
HORSE is one of Taylor’s favourite games, and he recently showed his dominance in the format by taking down a HORSE event in his hometown casino in Calgary during a recent Super Stack series at Deerfoot Inn & Casino. Taylor has been knocking on the bracelet door regularly over the past few years, especially in the mixed games, and he would likely make most people’s short list for Best Canadian Player without a bracelet.
This could be his shot to get that bracelet monkey off his back and score his first. He is about 800k back of chip leader Andrey Zhigalov from Russia, with a pretty international final table representing Canada, Russia, USA, Belarus, and France. Alan “Ari” Engel also found a final table bag for the final day, sitting 8th, while Alex Livingston, who seems to be cashing everything so far this series, bagged the second-smallest stack.
Greg Mueller (44th) and Ron Schindelhein (43rd) were among the Canadian cashers on the second day, with both players pocketing $4.647 for their troubles.
Canadian Monsters
Luteng Li leads Canadian bags from the opening flight to the Monster Stack. He fronted 13 Canadian bags from the first flight, including Georg Jancev, Michael Adamo, Haven Taylor, Mike Leah, and Aaron La.
The second flight to the Monster is still freshly complete at the time of writing, but it looks like Ian Monahoyios has bagged a top 40 stack to lead Canadians as 636 players moved on from 1b. You can get Canadian focused daily recaps of all the WSOP action by following Canada at WSOP 2025 right here on poker.pro.
