The good times kept rolling for the United States’ neighbor to the north Sunday night as Canadian Justin Oliver outlasted American Nick Schwarmann to win the $2,500 No-Limit Hold’em Four-Handed event.
The victory came on the heels of an epic comeback performance by Oliver who was short stacked during much of the late stages of play. The 37-year-old Toronto-based jeweler and poker player earned $309,071 and, of course, his first gold bracelet.
Impressively, the victory marks the eighth time for a Canadian-born winner to be crowned at this summer’s series and the ninth time in 2013 including Daniel Negreanu’s World Series of Poker APAC Main Event win.
Earlier this month, Canada set the record for most wins in a year by a non-U.S. country at the WSOP with seven. Oliver’s victory adds to that accolade by one and further cements Canada’s place in the WSOP record books.
This is the second year the WSOP has offered a $2,500 Four-Handed No Limit Hold’em event. This year’s field consisted of 566 players who generated a prize pool of $1,287,650. The top 64 players each earned a payday worth $4,223. Some of the big names that made the money but missed out on the final table included Faraz Jaka (53rd), Trevor Pope (48th), Rene Angelil (34th), Maria Ho (26th), and Stephen Chidwick (9th).
In an unusual turn of events, the final table of this tournament actually began with only three players instead of four. During five-handed play, both John Juanda and David Pham were eliminated in a three-way all-in. Since Pham had more chips than Juanda, he was credited with the fourth place finish, which marks his second final table of the summer. He is the eighteenth player to make multiple final table appearances at the Rio this year.
Pham was the only previous bracelet winner at the final table. In fact, all three of the other players were making their first career WSOP final table appearances.
Here are the final table results from the $2,500 Four-Handed No Limit Hold’em event:
1st: Justin Oliver – $309,071
2nd: Nick Schwarmann – $191,434
3rd: Jared Jaffe – $129,447
4th: David Pham – $89,736
