Aubrey Williams Brushes Off Hate Amid WSOP Ladies Championship Final Table Run
Williams noted that she and another player “never played women’s events, like we were against them for so long.” In fact, it’s other women who convinced Williams to play in ladies events in the first place. But she says the internet trolls do not reflect how other players treat her at the table. Stu Ungar and Johnny Moss are the only players who have won it three times, with Doyle Brunson and Johnny Chan two-time champions. Johnny Moss, with three titles and six final tables, is another standout performer who is hard to ignore.
It is always important to look at which hands you block and which hands you do not block because that can influence your decision. If there are easier spots at the table, you do not always need to take the thinnest possible edge against the toughest opponent. I was running over the entire table and doing really well.
We believe that an independent media company will help shape the future of poker by providing an authentic platform for players’ views. PokerOrg represents the independent voice and passion of poker players. After just over eight hours of play, with the field three eliminations away from the money, it was time for what would be a lengthy two-and-a-half-hour session of hand-for-hand play to burst the bubble.
The 2026 WSOP Main Event final table will take place from August 3-5, and will air on ESPN. If a player is participating in a tournament that PokerNews is live reporting from, he or she can update his or her own chip counts, post comments, and share photos with other PokerNews readers from around the world. Tong, who had spent much of the tournament near the top of the leaderboard, was the first to fall in sixth after Glaser won a race to send the action to the livestreamed feature table.
The day before we started the final table, we all saw the final table setup together and went through the practical stuff. I can say with 99% certainty that I put in the fewest hours of preparation going into the final table of any player. Looking back now, what stands out regarding your play at the final table? What if three or four players at every poker table were women?
As if there isn’t enough live poker going on to keep players happy, PokerStars is offering the latest version of their World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP). It only took a couple of hours to go from the final seven players, blow past the final three players, and reach the final two survivors in the tournament. After a Monday night that seemed like it would last forever, it was a rather rapid Tuesday for the 2026 WSOP Main Event final table.
Then I slowly started to realize that sometimes I have no control over the result. It really took a toll on me for a long time. I used to cry after busting day twos. Honestly, handling it didn’t come naturally. From the start, I wasn’t playing the Main Event to get twenty-third or eighteenth. We still have a lot of work to do to finish this tournament.
“I haven’t played many live tournaments this summer,” he said. ESPN will only cover the Main Event, with daily livestreaming on the ESPN app leading up to the final table, which will be livestream on ESPN or ESPN2. The 2026 WSOP will have more livestreaming coverage than ever before on more platforms than in previous years, and only pre-final table Main Event coverage will be behind a paywall. All pre-final table livestreams will take place daily during the Main Event on the ESPN App. Those still standing will then return to the felt on Aug. 3 for three days of final table action. The best place to watch live poker tournaments is usually by tuning in to live streams.
How to use the Live Tournament Calendar
- Start-of-day leader Reoma Ogawa was ousted in seventh place when his roughly nine-big-blind three-bet shove was called by Molenaar’s ac,qs.
- It had no negative effect on my play.
- How are APT events different from tournaments that you play in the United States?
- The 2026 APT Incheon Main Event has become the largest international poker tournament ever held in the city, and the second-largest APT Main Event ever held in South Korea.
- In the end, Smit learned that poker players and artists weren’t that different in the application of their artistry.
- Players who survive these flights will advance to the corresponding Day 2 before combining for the first time for Day 3 on Wednesday, July 8.
There you can access all the results and photos from each event. You can also click the event itself to see coverage of each event. See the full 2026 WSOP schedule below and find the buy-in and date of every single official event at this year’s Series.
In 2013, Holloway claimed a gold bracelet in the WSOP Employees Event for $84,915, and in 2019, he won the inaugural Poker Industry Championship. A Wisconsin native who has worked in the poker industry since 2009, Chad Holloway has years of experience as host of the PokerNews Podcast. Meanwhile, Life Outside Poker Podcast episodes will be more sporadic, but when episodes are available, they usually release on Tuesdays.
The 2026 WSOP Main Event kicks off with the first of four starting flights on Thursday, July 2. Each year, the tournament’s prestige grows, and 2026 is no exception. During the seven-hour interview, Lederer discussed the collapse of Full Tilt Poker, the board, the investors, Ray Bitar, Chris Ferguson, Phil Ivey, Black Friday, and more. On September 8, 2013, PokerNews’ Head of Content Matthew Parvis conducted an exclusive interview with Howard Lederer that was released as a seven-part series titled, “Lederer Files”. PokerNews also employs contributors from various countries.
From Benny Binion to the Modern Era: A Complete History of the WSOP Bracelet
Many players would check-raise sets and two pair there to get more money in with their hand and to protect their hand. It’s also very interesting to play in the sense that the field is a little bit different than a usual main event. We went through some technical spots together where I definitely got some nice help with certain spots you could expect frequently at the final table.
Williams’ biggest poker moment came earlier this year when she took down the Borgata Winter Poker Open $1,000 Hybrid Championship for $52,540. In 2022, she won a $40,000 guaranteed No-Limit Hold’em Monster Stack event for $6,604. “I started playing in middle school watching Moneymaker or whatever,” she said. And when asked why she played in the Ladies Championship, her answer was simple. But Williams was unfazed, telling PokerNews on break that she doesn’t monitor social media and that no one that she’s played with has had an issue with her. And while her table mates greeted her with friendly smiles and open arms, her deep run created a stir in some anti-transgender social media circles.
Did you work with any coaches at all to prepare for the final table? I was feeling good and confident going into the final table. I really liked the break because I could really recharge my batteries and have a good mindset coming into the final table. It became pretty clear from early on at the final table that you weren’t there to ladder up. I really hope that it also attracts new interest and new players to the game because it’s just a fantastic sport to be involved in. Those are the kind of hands that are the reason I love the game and make poker what it is.
Then there are other players who are really about that life. But they completely neglect the fact that poker is a multi-street game. A lot of people call the turn because they think they have the best hand enough of the time.
On the flip side, I think poker tours consolidating media in house or to official contractors has really killed the rest of poker content. Interviewing them, I got to see a bit of personality that didn’t necessarily come out at the tables, but I don’t know if ‘concealed’ is the word I would use. Seth Palansky in particular, got a lot of unwarranted hate back in the day. Working directly for the WSOP did give me a great appreciation for the importance of logistics which were often lost on the larger poker community. When you later worked on the official WSOP side, how did your understanding of the event change? I would listen to Gavin Smith, Joe Sebok, and what started as Scott Huff on the CardPlayer podcast and then Joe Stapleton on PokerWire radio every day during the summer and when they were on the road with the WPT.
The state in which you can actually pull the trigger on the play you want to make, without having to pretend that you are something you are not. To see the full breakdown by Saaskilahti of one of the most debated hands of the 2026 WSOP Main Event, click on the video at the top of the article. Saaskilahti handled the huge chip swing with the grace and poise of a consummate professional. “I think he would raise or min-raise most of those hands.” “Preflop, I wasn’t expecting Jumalon to have too many ax hands,” says Saaskilahti. I’ve won over $1,000,000 in cash games.
“It’s not like making a statement or anything. I’m just playing a tournament.” “I’m a woman, so I play in the women’s event,” Williams told PokerNews. No, players from all over the world are able to enter and play in the 2026 WSOP Main Event. Yes, there are live and online satellites available to the 2026 WSOP Main Event. It’s difficult to define the Poker News Daily best WSOP Main Event record, but several players are certainly in the conversation.
And he did so in an era of poker when five-figure buy-ins were far from the norm. For the younger generations that might not know, Negreanu racked up well over $4M in tournament earnings. And then Negreanu took center stage – first providing listeners with a bit of his poker backstory before launching into a story about his first bracelet win back in 1998. We’ll have much more from the Main Event and the rest of the series, so keep your browsers locked on PokerOrg, the official media partner of the Asian Poker Tour. Along with overall chip leader Shawn Lee, who bagged 329,000 on Day 1B, there are plenty of former APT Lion Trophy winners who’ll be back on Wednesday as they continue their quest to add to their collection.
Sometimes the best decision is to preserve your stack and keep attacking the players who are making obvious mistakes. A lot of players torch money because they are worried about being exploited by people who are not actually exploiting them. There are some players who are trying to put together an aggressive game, but they do not really have the guts to triple-barrel bluff. But I will say that I can’t wait for what is lining up to be a very entertaining final table. I try to stay out of the prediction game for the events I am a broadcaster on. The best chance for Lucas Jumalon not to win is if they card him right before the final table and discover he’s been using a fake ID and is only 14 years old.
It’s the only platform in the US where you can win a poker tournament for official WSOP gold bracelets without leaving home! For players in Nevada, New Jersey, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, WSOP Online has become something worth paying attention to. This app is the essential tool for player wanting to take advantage of the full event experience
The current Card Player Player of the Year race leader already has over $60.9 million in career cashes to his name, and is well-situated to add to that total with a deep run in this event. Hot on Deeb’s heels are bracelet winners Dutch Boyd (950,000) and Michael Banducci (933,000), as well as two-time bracelet winners Craig Varnell (932,000) and Boris Kolev (913,000). Nine-time bracelet winner Shaun Deeb fell just shy of that mark with 960,000.
Since 1854, when the California Grand Casino opened in Pacheco, poker has been established in the state. That is about all we know for the time being – complete schedule and details will be published in the coming weeks – but it enough for now for… Read more » Quarter-century of poker Online poker giant PokerStars has announced that the 25th running of the PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) will be September 6-30. That will be rectified this week as the crème of the European poker world goes to one of its favorite locations, the Casino Barcelona in Spain. Since 1970, the WSOP has been the place where that dream lives. The WSOP bracelet is the ultimate symbol of poker history and greatness.
Each WPT final table is filmed and livestreamed or broadcast for television on Bally Sports. The World Poker Tour was founded in 2002 and is a series of international poker tournaments. To play live tournaments at the WSOP there are many options to make your way to the WSOP in Las Vegas or WSOPE. Our Live Poker Tournament Calendar is a useful poker tool that you can use to see all live tournaments in your region or country. QQPK’s $30 satellite sends you to a live Taipei final table.
The cement truck accident threw a wrench into the plan, causing the event to lose 25% of its starting flights. This $1,000,000 event already had an aggressive guarantee. Justin Hammer talks about the first flight of the RunGood Finale series being cancelled due to a power outage and how they went about figuring out whether to honor the guarantee. Schulman’s voice and cadence makes all the difference here – so all the more reason to head on over to the SiriusXM web-player and roll the tape. In the episode’s closing moments, Schulman read off a few messages he had sent to their mutual friend Eric Wasserson about eliminations suffered at the hands of ‘Kid Poker’. \”2004 was the only time where I felt like I am the best at this. I won like $4.5 million – the biggest buy-in was $10K.\”
Sure, there are times when you get coolered, and you’ve got to put it in. It’s a game where I think that people have this completely backward. There are a lot of hands and spots where limping is correct, and there are a lot of multi-way pots. Sure, deep-stacked you can be adding some limps into your game. I’ve always felt that in no-limit hold’em post-flop, my hand reading skills are much better than preflop. I’m excited about this, because again, the hand equities run really close.
With over 900 episodes, it is considered among the best poker podcasts in the world, with millions of views across all platforms every year. Established in November 2010, the PokerNews Podcast is one of the longest-running poker podcasts in the industry. At PokerNews, we’re proud to bring you a family of acclaimed poker podcasts, including the PokerNews Podcast, BetRivers Table Talk Podcast Presented By PokerNews, MSPT Podcast Presented By PokerNews, and Life Outside Poker. Williams is also still in, and she has no time for hate as she competes for her first bracelet.
Do you see this as a once-in-a-lifetime thing? But sometimes for me the smallest pots are the most fun. I don’t think I can really point to one moment during those eight days and say that was it.
Check out the latest tournament coverage from PokerNews! This material may not be reproduced, displayed, modified or distributed without the express prior written permission of the copyright holder. We encourage all users to check the promotion displayed matches the most current promotion available by clicking through to the operator welcome page.