Maria Ho Falls Just Short of Her First WSOP Gold Bracelet
During her outstanding career, 40-year-old Maria Ho made 8 WSOP final table appearances, but she never managed to win the coveted World Series bracelet. The star of the "Game of Gold" show got another chance to correct this situation in the WSOP Paradise $1,500 Mystery Millions tournament, in which the second trophy of the festival was at the stake (the first one was claimed by Allan Mello in Millionaire Maker).
Maria Ho came to the final table with a chip leader stack, and was confidently walking towards her dream. One by one, she single-handedly knocked out five opponents:
- 9️⃣ Hyunsup Kim (South Korea), who found himself in auto all-in and lost with KT against K5.
- 8️⃣ Legendary Davidi Kitai (Belgium), who lost a coin flip with AKs against 88 for a pot of 34 BB.
- 7️⃣ Indian player Kartik Ved, who lost with KQ against A9 for a pot of 22 BB.
- 6️⃣ Thomas Santerne (France), who lost a coin flip with AK vs TT for a pot of 43 BB.
- 5️⃣ Drew Scott (Canada), who lost with AQ vs KJs for a pot of 30 BB.
Before the 4-max, Ho had amassed a stack of 41 big blinds, while the rest of the players only had 27 BB in total, but that's when Maria's luck ended. She first lost a 22 BB pot with A3 against KJ to Max Pinolla (USA) and then lost another 36 BB pot with 44 against A9o of Jin Hoon Lee (South Korea). In the end, Maria was left with crumbs from her stack and finished the competition in third place (+$200,000). The tournament victory and treasured bracelet went to Jin Hoon Lee, who also added $420,000 to his account.
Final top-three in the event:
Place | Player | Country | Prize |
---|---|---|---|
1 | Jin Hoon Lee | South Korea | $420,000 |
2 | Max Pinnola | USA | $257,100 |
3 | Maria Ho | USA | $200,000 |
Among the other results of the tournament, it is worth noting another success of Rayan Chamas, who took 12th place and earned $33,000. This is Chamas' second consecutive deep run after he ended his relationship with GGPoker. Phil Hellmuth also got into the ITM after the "max late registration" (30th place and $17,600 in prize money).