WSOP Circuit Canada at Playground: Ricardo Cermeno-Sandoval Wins the PLO No Ante Again

Quick summary

• Event #12, C600PLONoAnte:RicardoCermeno-Sandovalwinsagain,takingC27,840 from 238 entries. He won the same event at Playground in March.
• Event #13, C400LadiesEvent:ChantalHamelwinsC7,746 from 81 entries.
• Main Event Day 1B: 368 entries, 37 survivors. Santiago Plante leads with 1,100,000 chips.
• Main Event so far: 579 entries after two flights. Day 1C (Saturday) is the last chance to enter.

Winning a WSOP Circuit ring is hard. Winning the same event twice in one year is rare. Ricardo Cermeno-Sandoval did exactly that on Friday in Kahnawake. He took down the C$600 Pot-Limit Omaha “No Ante” for the second time in 2026, eight months after he first won it at the same venue.

The same night, Chantal Hamel won the C400LadiesEvent,andtheC2,500 Main Event finished its second starting flight. Montreal-area regulars are dominating so far. Here’s the full breakdown, plus what the numbers say about the Main Event guarantee going into Saturday’s final flight.

Event #12: Cermeno-Sandoval Goes Back-to-Back in PLO

Event #12 drew 238 entries and built a C124,950prizepool.ThatworksouttoexactlyC525 per entry, so 87.5% of each buy-in went into the pool. The top 36 players got paid (about 15% of the field), with a min-cash of C$1,210, roughly double the buy-in.

Heads-up was an all-Canadian match between Cermeno-Sandoval and Matthew Bauer. Cermeno-Sandoval won it for C27,840,aWSOPCircuitringandaWSOPParadisepackage.BauertookC18,070 for second.

Event #12 results (238 entries, C$124,950 prize pool):

1. Ricardo Cermeno-Sandoval – C$27,840 (22.3% of pool)
2. Matthew Bauer – C$18,070 (14.5%)
3. Kevin Macdonald – C$12,170 (9.7%)
4. Anatoly Shilyuk – C$8,420 (6.7%)
5. Pengxiang Ruan – C$6,000 (4.8%)
6. Stephane Faure – C$4,410 (3.5%)
7. Jean Arseneau – C$3,340 (2.7%)
8. Mark Ardigides – C$2,610 (2.1%)
9. Aaron Godden Noorzad – C$2,111 (1.7%)
10. Cory Mangrove – C$1,760 (1.4%)
11. Patrick St-Onge – C$1,760 (1.4%)

The payout was top-heavy. The final nine shared C$84,971, about 68% of the pool, and the winner alone took more than a fifth. That’s typical of smaller PLO fields. Compare it with the Mini Main earlier in the festival, where 1,949 entries meant the winner took less than 12% of the pool.

Why this second title matters

Cermeno-Sandoval was already one of the most consistent players at Playground’s March 2026 Circuit stop. He recorded nine cashes and four final tables in that series and won this same C600PLONoAnteforC40,344, his first WSOP Circuit ring.

Across the two wins, he has made C68,184fromtwoC600 buy-ins in the same event. This week’s prize was about 31% smaller than March’s, which points to a smaller field this time. Still, beating 237 opponents in a high-variance game like PLO twice in one year is an achievement. It suggests he has a real edge in this particular format against the local player pool.

New to “PLO No Ante”? A quick explainer

In Pot-Limit Omaha, you get four hole cards instead of two and must use exactly two of them with three from the board. Bets are capped at the size of the pot. “No Ante” means only the small and big blinds are posted, with no extra ante from the table. That has a practical effect: pots start smaller and stacks stay deeper in big blinds for longer, so there’s more post-flop play. That suits patient players who read boards well, and it’s probably part of why the same strong regulars keep winning it.

Event #13: Chantal Hamel Wins the C$400 Ladies Event

The Ladies Event drew 81 entries for a C27,945prizepool,whichisC345 per entry, the same 86.25% rate as the Mini Main. Thirteen players cashed, with places 10 to 13 each earning C780.Canada’sChantalHamelwontheringandC7,746, beating Golnaz Aghabeigi (C4,920)andMeiYang(C3,290).

Event #13 results (81 entries, C$27,945 prize pool):

1. Chantal Hamel – C$7,746
2. Golnaz Aghabeigi – C$4,920
3. Mei Yang – C$3,290
4. Laurie Willett Turner – C$2,300
5. Rebecca Trianosky – C$1,680
6. Alice Sewall – C$1,290
7. Julia Gallagher – C$1,050
8. Isabelle Simard – C$900
9. Joya Mursalin – C$810
10. Cindy Spier – C$780
11. Brigitte Korak – C$780

Hamel’s prize was 27.7% of the pool, or about 19 times her buy-in. With only 81 runners, each seat was worth a lot: a player in this event had roughly a 1-in-6 chance of cashing, compared with about 1-in-10 in the bigger hold’em events. Fields are small, but Ladies events at Circuit stops remain some of the best-value rings on the schedule.

Main Event: Santiago Plante Leads Day 1B

The C$2,500 No-Limit Hold’em Main Event is the centrepiece of the festival, with 50,000 starting chips. Day 1B drew 368 entries, about 74% more than Day 1A’s 211. Just 37 players bagged, a survival rate of around 10%, almost the same as Day 1A, where 22 advanced.

Santiago Plante has the biggest stack at 1,100,000 chips (75 big blinds), 22 times the starting stack. Karim-Olivier Kamal and Shaan Siddiqui also bagged 1.1 million. Home players dominated the counts: the top 26 stacks from Day 1B all belong to Canadians.

Day 1B top 11 chip counts:

1. Santiago Plante – 1,100,000 (75 BB)
2. Karim-Olivier Kamal – 1,100,000 (72 BB)
3. Shaan Siddiqui – 1,100,000 (71 BB)
4. Anthony Tulai – 971,000 (64 BB)
5. Paul Nakhle – 939,000 (62 BB)
6. Justin Halioua – 838,000 (55 BB)
7. Parth Mansukh – 800,000 (53 BB)
8. Lawrence Leblanc – 793,000 (52 BB)
9. Carter Swidler – 758,000 (50 BB)
10. Donald Cowie – 705,000 (47 BB)
11. Jonathan Bussieres – 648,000 (43 BB)

Can the Main Event reach its guarantee?

Here’s where it gets interesting. After two flights, the Main Event has 579 entries. Playground holds the record for the largest WSOP Circuit Main Event prize pool, C4,450,500inAugust2025,drawnby1,978entries,whichisexactlyC2,250 per entry. Assuming the same rate, the reported C2.5millionguaranteeneedsabout1,112entries.Thecurrent579entriescoverroughlyC1.30 million, so Day 1C needs about 530 more entries to avoid an overlay.

That’s a big number, but Saturday is when Playground fills up. In the Mini Main earlier this month, the Saturday flight alone made up almost 40% of the entire field. If the Main Event follows the same weekend pattern, the guarantee is reachable, but it will be close. If you’re a local player deciding whether to fire on Saturday, a possible overlay is a real bonus to your expected value.

Practical Takeaways

• Day 1C is the last chance to enter the Main Event. With roughly 10% of each flight surviving, plan for a long day and a big, softer Saturday field.
• Look at the non-hold’em and smaller events. The PLO event and the Ladies Event both had smaller fields, top-heavy payouts and good rake ratios. The odds of a deep run are much better than in a 2,000-runner hold’em event.
• Know the regulars. Cermeno-Sandoval’s two wins show that specialists can keep winning the same event against the same local pool. If you play PLO at Playground, expect tough tables at the top.

What’s Next

The Main Event’s Day 1C runs today (Saturday, November 14). Survivors from all three flights then combine for Day 2. This is Playground’s fourth WSOP stop of the year, running November 2–17, 2026. More ring events are still to come, including a C$5,000 Mega Stack High Roller.

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