Ema Zajmovic Poker Hendon
For the second straight World Poker Tour (WPT) Main Event at Playground Poker Club, Ema Zajmovic is knocking on the doors of history. With Day 3 of the WPT Playground Main Event coming to an end, Zajmovic is on top and just nine players stand in her way of becoming the first female to win an open WPT event.
Ema Zajmovic has had considerable success in tournament poker over the last few years, with her fair share of final tables on the World Poker Tour. Still, despite playing in over 10 EPT Main. Ema Zajmovic has had considerable success in tournament poker over the last few years, with her fair share of final tables on the World Poker Tour. Still, despite playing in over 10 EPT Main.
Much like back in November, during the WPT Montreal Main Event, Zajmovic will take the lead into the unofficial final table. Unfortunately, a win was not in her cards last time, falling in fifth place but giving way to a victory for poker legend Mike Sexton.
Zajmovic got an early boost to her stack when she got all in against the start-of-day chip leader Hendrik Latz. Zajmovic had one foot out the door running her ace-queen into Latz’s ace-king, but a queen on the board reversed her fortunes and propelled her up the leaderboard. From there, she climbed to the top, continuously stacking chips, including those of Pascal Lefrancois, who Zajmovic sent to the rail in 11th place.
A total of 28 players returned for action on Day 3, but at the end of five levels, only 10 were left. When play was halted, Zajmovic shoveled a stack worth 2,985,000 into her bag. Once again, Jean-Pascal Savard was able to bag the second-best stack at night’s end. Savard stayed relatively quiet for most of Day 3 and chipped up to the tune of 2,095,000.
When the day began, there were two WPT Champions Club members still in contention. Anthony Zinno’s bid for a fourth WPT title fell short when he busted in 24th place. Eric Afriat, on the other hand, is still in the mix and sitting pretty. Afriat bagged 1,135,000, good enough for fourth position.
The remaining field consists of Tam Ho (1,700,000), Jean Francois Bouchard (1,005,000), Carter Swidler (615,000), Henry Tran (525,000), Ryan Yu (520,000) and Danny Li (495,000).
Jordan Saccucci saw his stellar Winter Festival performance continue on Day 3 but his time in the Main Event would come to a halt in 14th place. Others to fall on Day 3 include partypoker qualifiers Alexandru Baron (12th) and Victor Adams (14th), as well as the start-of-day chip leader Hendrik Latz (20th), Samuel Gagnon (25th) and Jake Schwartz (27th).
Day 4 will begin at noon local time with a plan to play down to an official WPT final table of six.
Across the room, Day 1 of Event #13: $1,650 NL Hold’em Second Chance had kicked off Monday morning. With a storm making its way through Montreal, 108 players made it to their seat by the time late registration closed. After 15 levels of play, just 21 runners were left and leading the charge was Chad Coombs.
Coombs has a sizeable lead on the rest of the competition, backed in part by a big cooler against one-time chip leader Ted Doukas. A preflop raise war between the two ended with Doukas all in holding pocket queens only to find Coombs holding pocket aces. Coombs finished the night off with 341,500.
Alexandre Lavigne ended play with the second largest stack, firing 253,000 into the bag. Canadian Super High Roller Daniel Dvoress, also bagged a top stack, capping off a strong Day 1 with 222,500. Rounding out the top of the leaderboard was Winter Festival Omaha Champion Nicolas Le Floch (195,500), who also made a deep run in the WPT Playground, and Matthew Wantman (182,500).
As expected, a strong field gathered for the event. Some notable players to come and go include Maria Ho, Xuan Liu, Christian Harder, Mike Sexton, Kristen Bicknell, Chanracy Khun and two-time Second Chance champion Benny Chen.
When play resumes on Day 2, the field will be just seven eliminations from the money. Only the top 14 spots will earn a cash. A min-cash is worth $3,690 while a top prize of $47,140 awaits the eventual champion.
Later on in the day, Event #14: $330 NL Hold’em Mega Stack Turbo took the stage, boasting a $30,000 guarantee. A total of 147 entries gathered, boosting the prize pool to $42,777, and paying the top 15. After making a heads-up deal, Andrew Johnson came away with the champion’s trophy and a score of $9,500.
Final Table Payouts:
| Place | Name | Prize |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Andrew Johnson | $9,500 |
| 2 | Nick Nickoletopoulos | $8,497 |
| 3 | Rishi Makkar | $5,820 |
| 4 | Andrew Hansen | $4,380 |
| 5 | Richard Sysko | $3,300 |
| 6 | Alex Keo | $2,490 |
| 7 | Behrooz Salemi | $1,870 |
| 8 | Brian R Iseman | $1,410 |
| 9 | Maria Ho | $1,070 |
| 10 | Silvio La Palerma | $800 |
According to the Playground live blog, Johnson’s heads-up opponent Nick Nickoletopoulos steamrolled the event, recording knockout after knockout. It is unknown how many bounties Nickoletopoulos made away with, but he was responsible for more than half of the final table eliminations, including Maria Ho, who entered as one of the chip leaders.
Johnson also entered as one of the leaders but took a backseat to the Nickoletopoulos show until he busted Andrew Hansen in fourth. Johnson then took out Rishi Makkar in a brutal beat. Makkar got his remaining chips in the middle holding pocket aces, in great shape against Johnson’s pocket threes. The board, however, cruel as it can be, had other ideas, dropping a three on the turn and sending Makkar to the rail.
With deal talks striking up while four-handed and again during three-handed play, the final two competitors removed a slice from the top prize to boost the second place prize. Play resumed with the two exchanging the lead a few times until Johnson had the edge and dealt the final blow.
After flopping trip tens, Johnson checked, allowing his opponent to catch top pair on the turn. Johnson led the turn which was met by a call from Nickoletopoulos. Johnson shoved on the river, and after a brief deliberation, Nickoletopoulos put his tournament life on the line, making the call and seeing the bad news.
Aside from Day 4 of the WPT Playground Main Event and Day 2 of the Second Chance, there is one side event for players to enjoy on Tuesday. Event #15: $550 NL Hold’em 6-Max gets underway at 7 p.m., featuring a $45,000 guarantee.
The Playground Winter Festival runs through Feb. 15 and PokerNews will bring you daily updates of all the happenings throughout the festival. For full coverage and details check out the Playground event blog here.
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“Aggressive…not afraid to play pots,” a winner whose success has been “no fluke.” Those were the descriptive words from the mouth of WSOP bracelet winner, WPT titlist and Poker Hall of Famer Mike Sexton when referring to one of today’s biggest and brightest rising stars of the poker world. He was talking about EmaZajmovic.
Who is this beautiful brunette with the steely-eyed gaze and deceptively cunning smile? She’s one of Canada’s most recently beloved poker players. One who experienced more trials and tribulations in her youth than most experience in a lifetime, and at just 28 years of age, has earned more money playing major live poker events than some of us see in a decade.
She is the first woman to ever claim an open-entry WPT Main Event title. She is one of the few Canadians—and even fewer women—to make it to Day 5 of the 2018 WSOP Championship. She is a world traveler, professional rounder, and fierce grinder of the felt. She is EmaZajmovic.
EmaZajmovic Shoots for the Stars
Ema shows as much promise as fellow Canadian Kristen Bicknell. That’s saying a lot, since young Ema has much less hands-on experience. Bicknell spent many more years earning her stripes, both live and online. Ema was still in grade school, knew nothing of poker, while Kristen was busy crushing her foes, playing more than 2.5 million hands online in 2006. Yet, in just two short years, Ema’s pocketed well over half a million dollars in live events all over the world.
She started out small time, just playing for fun in cash games. Then she upgraded to tournaments. That earned her three small cashes between 2011 and 2015. It wasn’t until 2016 that she began carving her name into the poker world. Zajmovic collected $15,000 for a 929th place finish in the 2016 WSOP Main Event—little more than the $10k buy-in and expenses to enter. But then, she headed back home to Montreal, Quebec, where—so it turns out—there were much bigger fish to be fried.
In November 2016, Zajmovic entered the WPT Montreal Main Event, where she grinded her way through table after table to make the final. There, she met legendary poker player Mike Sexton. Ema landed in 5th place for CA-$102,010, while her new friend Mike took down the tournament and WPT title. She had clearly made an impression on him, though—an impression that was more deeply embossed a few months later. In February of 2017, she emerged victorious in the WPT Playground Main Event in Kahnawake, Canada for CA-$241,500, and a title of her own—the very first WPT Title ever won by a female in an open-entry event.
Mike Sexton poses with 2017 WPT Playground Title Winner Ema Zajmovic – photo credit, WPT
Sexton knew then that Ema Zajmovic was the real deal. “Ema’s win was no fluke”, he said shortly after posing for this photograph (credit WPT). “You’ll be hearing a lot more from her in the future,” he promised. And he was right.
A half-dozen cashes later in April 2018, Ema ground her way through a NLHE even at WPT Amsterdam to finish 2nd for €100,260. A month later, she was back in Las Vegas for the 2018 World Series of Poker. Preliminary events eluded her, but the 2018 WSOP Main Event did not disappoint. Zajmovic made it to Day 5 before joining the railbirds. Finishing 215th, she was one of only 8 Canadians left in the running at that point, and nearly half as many females. That deep run earned her another US-$49,335, bringing her total career live tournament earnings to US-$555,924 (CA-$733,516).
Past Begets Strong Will to Overcome Odds
Ema didn’t have what you’d call a typical upbringing—not by a long shot. She was born in Yugoslavia just before the devastating, decade-long Yugoslav Wars (1991-2001); a catastrophic scar in world history that led to the death of over 140,000, and displacement of more than 4 million people. Her family escaped the tragedy in 1996, leaving behind everything to start a new life in Quebec City. Ema was 6.
She spent most of her educational years here in Canada. She loved school and admits she was “not a cool kid”, and didn’t exactly fit in. Ema was the new kid, struggling to learn a new language (French). But that didn’t deter her. She poured her energy into her studies, and before long, she was melding just fine, participating in sports and other activities. Her athletic prowess saw her hanging out more often with the boys; a fact that surely helped her to compete in the male-dominated sport of poker later in life.
Poker was not originally a dream job for Zajmovic. Her ambition was to become a lawyer. In college, however, her focus took a turn. She graduated with a degree in public relations and masters in political communication, then went on to become a professional in the field of public relations. Somewhere along that path, however, she was introduced to poker.
She was 19 years old then, dating a poker player. He traveled a lot to play, and Ema went along with him. While most of the poker wives and girlfriends spent their time shopping, Ema found that too boring. Instead, she hung around the poker games and taught herself to play. First, she was participating in cash games, but soon enough she left those—and her now-ex boyfriend—behind. She started playing tournaments, finding them to be much more enjoyable.
Then, the inevitable happened. Her occupational roles reversed. She went from professional business woman with a part-time poker career, to a full-time poker player with an at-home side job in public relations.
Now, she has plenty of time to travel the world and participate in the most prestigious events. No doubt, as her self-proclaimed “biggest fan” Mike Sexton predicted last year, we’ll continue to see great things from Canada’s latest femme fatale of the felt, Ema Zajmovic.
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