It took until the final weekend of the World Series of Poker (WSOP), but the first open-event bracelet of the series to be awarded to a woman has now been handed out. Spanish player Leo Margets was the recipient of that hardware after she took down Event #83: $1,500 The Closer on the final weekend of the series.
While there is always at least one woman who wins a bracelet at the WSOP in the Ladies Event, prior to Event #83, the Ladies Event Bracelet was the only one on a female wrist so far this year. However, when the dust settled on the $1,500 The Closer, Spanish pro Leo Margets was the player with all the chips and the top prizes.
The win marked the biggest score of Margets’ career and pushed her career tournament winnings over the $1.65 million mark. It was her fourth tournament win, but her first win in nearly a decade according to Hendon Mob, with her most recent win before this one coming in 2012 after winning an EPT Women’s event.
With the main series in Las Vegas now complete, Margets remains the only woman to take down a live open event in 2021. There is still bracelet action going on in Europe with the 2021 WSOP Europe at King’s Resort in Rozvadov, Czech Republic, but the dust has settled on the WSOP at the Rio in Las Vegas.
Big excitement on a small rail
The end of the WSOP is always a bittersweet affair. The crowds are beginning to dwindle, and many of the players who do remain are seeing their hopes of a bracelet slowly drain away for another year. In many ways, the final few events of the Series can look like a throwback to where poker began—just people playing cards for money, with a few interested bystanders looking on.
Margets’ first bracelet win was the kind of low-key affair that is often seen at the end of the series. The excitement is clear for her and her small rail, but it was almost the sort of scene that is played out every weekend in small poker rooms across the world.
Beyond the bracelet and the better than $375k score, one big difference from a local weekend tournament was that Kevin “Kevmath” Mathers is not usually around to document the local games.
The road less traveled
Margets, a Winamax pro, has not taken the easy road to her nearly $1.7 million in career winnings. As mentioned above, the bracelet marks her first win since early 2012 and represents her biggest score so far. Her previous top score was actually her fourth score on Hendon Mob—she bagged $352,832 for a deep run to 27th place in the 2009 Main Event, and that remained her biggest score ever until the $376,850 bracelet win.
She came close to her first bracelet back in 2018 when she bagged a second-place finish for more than $120k, but the deep Main Event run in 2009 still marks her only other score of more than $200,000. In fact, one of her other wins was a $132k score in a Full Tilt event in 2010 and marks her only other score of more than $100,000 on Hendon Mob.
Other than those four scores, the rest of her $1,666,155 in tournament winnings comes from results smaller than $100k, which shows her tenacity and consistency at the game. Margets didn’t earn her nearly $1.7 million with a single huge score—she ground that money out on the tournament felt over her decade-and-a-half long career.
With her first bracelet now on her wrist, Margets will surely be looking to parlay this into a great 2022. While it is a bit unusual that she was the only female open-bracelet winner in 88 events in the 2021 WSOP, Margets’ consistency in amassing her bankroll makes her a great representative for 2021.
