December was a hell of a month in the game of poker with major events in Las Vegas, the Bahamas, Prague, and London.
The list of sites reads like the shooting schedule for a James Bond film where, instead of having just one scene in a casino, the entire movie is 007 degen- gambling ‘til six in the morn and then tweeting about it.
By the way, I pitched that premise to Amazon, the new owners of the Bond franchise, and they bought it in the room. And then conveniently returned it at Whole Foods.
World Poker Tour-Guide
Vegas saw the WPT Championship return to the Wynn Casino, though the entire tournament was held at the Encore as it has been every year they’ve done it. Why don’t they just say that, I have no idea.
Yes, the two hotels are connected by a mall containing stores only seen there, Beverly Hills, and the Isle of Capri, and where, if you manage to win any money, you can immediately drop it on a pair of Louboutins for your baby and a McLaren to attract her replacement, but the poker tournament happens at the Encore. Just sayin’.
The only thing called poker in the actual Wynn casino is the table game Pai Gow Poker, which my wife always plays because it reminds her of the Filipino card game that it’s based on, Pusoy Dos.
My certified public accountant is also an avid player. He says it’s a great entertainment value because you lose your money very slowly. To give you a scan of my financial brain, that’s what makes me comfortable with him handling our money.
The biggest events at WPT Vegas were the $1,100 WPT Prime Championship and the $10,400 WPT World Championship.
The Prime had 9,876 entries, blowing past their $5 million guarantee. This spectacularly robust field was due at least in part to many amateurs who qualified on ClubWPT and many pros who quantified on ClubWTF, as in “WTF, I’ll plunk down 1,100 for a shot at these punters.”
One of those punters was yours truly, sort of. I am a ClubWPT Gold member in good standing, but I was only a qualifier, once-removed.
My friend, the very funny @Vegasnervepoker, aka Jason Gallagher, won two seats online and put me in action. The results are not worth mentioning, especially to Jason, who had a piece of me.
Knocked out early and suddenly having a free night with my wife, we took full advantage. Once I collected her at Face Up Pai Gow, a variant that takes all the guesswork out of losing, we noticed something: there were far more cowboy hats than we are used to seeing even at a poker tournament.
Realizing the rodeo was in town, we headed down the Strip to the Ariat Brand Store, where we spent three hours shopping for western wear so we could spend 45 minutes at the Thomas and Mack Center watching the National Finals Rodeo, which, by the way, is a barbaric spectacle.
Pardon me, I misspoke. I mean a bareback spectacle. We agreed that we never need to do that again, though I’m not sure there’s anywhere else I can wear a belt buckle that wouldn’t fit in my first apartment.
My friend Jason went further than me in the Prime, courtesy of a second bullet, ultimately leveling up one click over min cash on Day 2. More importantly, the whole thing was taken down by Aaron Johnson for just over a cool million. Congrats, Aaron!
The World Poker Tour World Championship (sic)
1,865 players plunked down 10.4K to enter the redundantly titled WPT World Championship. The field contained many fan favorites, and Phil Ivey, who had built a big stack but busted out near the bubble when a player went runner-runner flush on him.
Other familiar names like Chris Moorman and Gus Hansen also failed to make deep runs, so when they got down to six-handed, it made for a very competent but less well-known final table, except perhaps for Jeremy Becker, aka the Wynn Wrecker (let the record show that he should be called the Encore End Boss).
Becker, who basically owns the Daily at the Wyncore (watch this catch on like wildfire), finished in 5th place for $710,000, giving daily regs and recs everywhere something to cheer about.
Soon, it was heads up between Schuyler Thornton and Soheb Porbandarwala. Thornton went on to take home the Mike Sexton Trophy in a remarkable fashion by winning twelve consecutive hands for a payday of $2,256,856, which was a couple of hundred thousand less than the advertised first prize.
Schuyler Thornton's path to a $2.2 MILLION DOLLAR score and @WPT World Championship title started with an $1,100 @WynnPoker SATELLITE 👀
— World Poker Tour (@WPT) December 24, 2025
He fired twice to earn a $10,400 @WPT World Championship @WynnLasVegas seat, and the rest is history 🏆
Hear it in the champ's own words 👇 https://t.co/YLliPcdrIQ pic.twitter.com/9e1flPWPrR
Thorton and Porbandarwala had made a deal before heads-up play began, apparently not distracted by the Money Presentation because it’s no longer performed by the Royal Flush Girls. Was that what ClubWPT Gold’s controversial post, “GTO Players took this from us,” was really talking about?
Meanwhile, there was nothing controversial about Thornton and Porbandarwala making a deal, because this wasn’t at the WSOP, where deals, chops, and gentleman’s agreements are verboten, right?
Paradise Lost and Found
I want to talk about everything that went down at WSOP Paradise, the highs and the lows. You might say there was nothing low in the Bahamas, as the cheapest buy-in was $2,750, but rest assured that even in the Heavenly Heights of Poker Nirvana, there was sin, and I mean besides ethical lapses by documentarians.
I couldn’t make it to Paradise myself because I was stuck in Purgatory, aka Hollywood, where the already diminished film and TV business began its traditional pre-Christmas slow down before Thanksgiving, 2019.
Despite Hollywood reassuming its former identity as a desert, at least financially, Hanukkah came early this year, and I was stuck at home attending all manner of holiday parties; the good, the bad, and the ugly sweater.
Meanwhile, much closer to the equator, there were some slow rollers among the high rollers. Before I get to that, though, let’s look at a crazy hand that was played three-way in the 25K Super Main between Andre Moirera, Brian Depaulo, and James Caputo.
If you haven’t seen it, Moirera min-raised to 100K with JJ, Depaulo flatted with KK, and James Caputo made it 200K with A♦5♦. Moirera called the modest three bet, which is when Depaulo made his move, shoving all-in for 1,175,000.
Caputo, perhaps chip drunk with a decent-sized stack or perhaps just drunk, called the all-in, and the action was back on Moirera, who then came over the top with a shove of 3 million.
Caputo now had a decision: increase the dosage or try talk therapy. No, he had to call the additional bet or fold. It’s that simple. Instead, he turned over his hand and said, “I’m all in against him (indicating Depaulo) but not against him (Moirera)”.
The ambiguity of this statement caused the dealer to muck Caputo’s hand, thinking he was folding, and chose to express it by indicating that he’s called one all-in, but he’s not calling the second bigger all-in. That seems like a reasonable interpretation.
Could Caputo have meant that he was all-in with one player but still deciding about whether to call the second all-in? Maybe, but having exposed his hand without declaring he’s calling should kill his hand right there.
Mayhem ensued, but I think the dealer and the floor made the best decision they could, given the circumstances. Caputo was out of his depth, and when he cursed out his opponents in the wake of the hand, he was out of line.
Now let’s talk about a good player being a jerk. Down to ten-handed in the same 25K Super Main, Eric Wasserson faced a raise in the small blind and looked down at pocket aces.
Naturally, he put in a three bet, at which point Benny Glaser in the big blind looked down at AQ off-suit and went all-in. The original raiser folded, and the action was back on Wasserson.
If you were watching on the live stream like I was, you expected Wasserson to snap call with the best of all possible hands. Instead, he tanked for over a minute and asked for a count of Glaser’s stack.
Could he really be considering folding? Uh, no. It would have been only slightly less relevant if he had asked for a count of the grains of sand on the Paradise Island beach that no players went to.
Having determined that he had Glaser barely covered, Wasserson finally called. When he flipped over aces, Glaser remarked, “Really low class, schmuck.” Okay, fine, Glaser actually only said the “Really” part, but I can read poker players’ souls (as long as I’m not in a hand) and I know that’s what Benny was thinking.
The similarly clairvoyant commentators on the stream, Ali Nejad and Faraz Jaka, were sure that Glaser would be mad when he saw Wasserson’s hand, and Glaser himself revealed to Jeff Platt in his post-bust-out interview that, in his opinion, Wasserson was “…not a very good human.”
Not very good smack-talk in my opinion, but Glaser wanted to keep it classy in contrast to his slow-rolling opponent.
Nejad and Jaka clutched pearls over Wasserson, looking at his hand twice more and asking for a count. Personally, I think it’s okay to stop and double-check that you read your own hand correctly, but after that, you call. In fact, you call with hands much worse than AA.
And I don’t think there’s any way that asking for a count at that moment isn’t a dick move. In fact, there’s only one person in the world whom I would let slide if they asked for a count with pocket aces preflop, facing an all-in bet. And that person is The Count from Sesame Street. That dude is obsessed with counting:
“One, one big-a blind! Two, two big-a blinds! Ah-ah-ah!” The Count can ask for a count. He can’t help himself. Everyone else has to snap-call unless they have a note from their shrink saying they have Adrian Monk-level OCD that compels them to combine addends to arrive at sums.
What I couldn’t help wonder, with AQ off, could Glaser have folded and waited for a better spot? Nobody has questioned his all-in, and many have even said it was mandatory. But what worse hand is calling? Probably none.
So he’s just hoping that both the original raiser and the three bettor are making moves. Starting the hand with 25 big blinds like Glaser was, I can see going all in after a raise and a call, but facing a raise and re-raise, I can see a strong argument for getting away from the hand.
Of course, Glaser has his history with Wasserson, so he’s putting him on a high degree of bluffs. But I would have folded.
The Callback
I take it back. Facing a raise and re-raise, Glaser shouldn’t have folded. He should have just said the magic words, “I’m all in against him, but I’m not against him.”
Have a great 2026!
