The 2025 World Sequence of Poker (WSOP) wrapped up in Las Vegas this month, delivering one other summer season of historic achievements and memorable moments.
On this column, we recap 4 of probably the most impactful tales from this 12 months’s collection in Las Vegas.
4. Desk Speak Frenzy
It wouldn’t be a correct poker listing with no little bit of controversy.
Czech professional Martin Kabrhel took middle stage for your complete eight-week collection along with his incessant chatter and fast wit. Media retailers swarmed his tables to catch the subsequent viral Kabrhel second—or to catch a second of his tablemates lashing out at him.
Kabrhel has been a chatterbox on the poker desk for many years, however it wasn’t till this 12 months that his outlandish conduct introduced him world discover. It didn’t damage that he made a number of deep runs on the collection, giving him most livestreaming and social media publicity. He received a bracelet, made a number of ultimate tables and completed fourth on the Participant of the 12 months leaderboard.
Whereas Kabrhel was the media darling of the collection, it was a special talkative professional who made headlines because the summer season drew to a detailed. Will Kassouf, already identified for his “speech play” antics on the poker desk, took it to a different degree throughout his deep run within the Fundamental Occasion.
Kassouf obtained a number of penalties throughout the match for his abrasive desk discuss. On Day 7, after being eradicated in thirty third place, he was knowledgeable by WSOP workers that he was banned from taking part in one other match for the rest of the 12 months. That set Kassouf off right into a tirade, resulting in him being escorted out of the venue by safety whereas media adopted to seize the scene.
3. Okamoto Almost Pulls Off the Three-Peat
Japan’s Shiina Okamoto pulled off an unimaginable feat on the 2024 WSOP, profitable the $1,000 Girls Occasion only one 12 months after ending in second place.
Then in 2025, she did the unthinkable. Okamoto went the gap and received the match for the second straight 12 months. The efficiency is mathematically inconceivable when you think about the turnout for these tournaments:
2023: 2nd place in a discipline of 1,295 gamers for $118,768
2024: 1st place in a discipline of 1,245 gamers for $171,732
2025: 1st place in a discipline of 1,368 gamers for $184,094
All eyes will likely be on Okamoto when the Girls Occasion comes round subsequent 12 months.
2. Leo Margets Ends the Drought
Okamoto wasn’t the one girl to make historical past on the poker tables this summer season. Leo Margets completed one thing on the WSOP that hadn’t been performed in 30 years, turning into the primary girl since Barbara Enright in 1995 to succeed in the $10,000 Fundamental Occasion ultimate desk.
It’s a storyline that has change into a mainstay at each Fundamental Occasion: Would the “Final Lady Standing” lastly break by means of and earn a seat at poker’s most prestigious ultimate desk? Margets had already been the Final Lady Standing as soon as earlier than, ending twenty seventh in 2009, and he or she leveraged that have into her historic ultimate desk run in 2025.
Her subsequent try at historical past was to change into the primary girl to win the Fundamental Occasion, however her run led to seventh place for $1.5 million.
1. Michael Mizrachi’s Historic Summer time
In what is going to go down as arguably the best WSOP efficiency ever, Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi captured each the $10,000 Fundamental Occasion and the $50,000 Poker Gamers Championship in 2025. Many high professionals take into account these two tournaments to be probably the most prestigious in all of poker, and “The Grinder” received each throughout the span of a month.
Not solely that, Mizrachi has now received the Poker Gamers Championship a complete of 4 occasions—greater than another participant.
Mizrachi’s feat surprised his friends. The dwelling members of the Poker Corridor of Fame stunned him after his Fundamental Occasion victory by circumventing the conventional Corridor of Fame election course of and inducting him proper then and there.
On the younger age of 44, Mizrachi’s poker match résumé is likely to be probably the most spectacular within the historical past of the sport.
