On Sunday night the amazing Spanish poker player Leo Margets smashed her way past 1,902 other competitors to take down $1,500 buy-in No Limit Hold’em Event #83: The Closer, picking up a much-sought after WSOP bracelet as well as a sweet $376k score. 

This a lifetime best for Margets in terms of the size of the cash, narrowly surpassing her deep run in the WSOP Main in 2009, in which she finished 27th. She also came very close to a WSOP bracelet back in 2018, finishing 2nd in the $1k NL Hold’em Double Stack.

Margets came into the heads up a big underdog as her opponent Alex Kulev held a 5.5-1 chip advantage, but a misread of her stack when very short gave her the beginning of a comeback as she flicked in 94 and got there against Kulev’s A9 to hit a four to double up, thinking she had 2.5bbs when she actually had 7bb, according to what she told reporters afterwards.

Kulev had led the final table and eliminated several players, whilst Margets had got rid of the UK’s own legend of the game Chris Moorman, and she ultimately was to put a stop to Kulev’s roll too. 

In the decisive hand which left Kulev on life support, the two players got it in on a 9♠5♦3♠ flop with Margets tabling Q♠5♠ and Kulev showing up with A♥9♦. Margets spiked again on the turn, this time hitting the 5♣ and a meaningless T♥ on the river left Margets with just 2bb in crumbs to sweep up to seal her victory.

Image courtesy of WSOP.com