By Alex Drummond, Editor-in-Chief · May 28, 2026 · Fact-checked by Maya Chen
KAHNAWAKE, Que. - Daniel Ghionoiu defeated a 1,022-entry field on Monday afternoon to take down the May 2026 World Series of Poker Circuit Main Event at Playground Poker Club, securing the C$370,001 first prize, his first WSOPC gold ring, and the largest tournament cash of his career. The five-day event, the headline of Playground's mid-year Circuit stop, ran from May 21 to May 25 at the Mohawk Territory of Kahnawake, just outside Montreal, and produced a C$2,319,940 prize pool that paid the top 148 finishers.
Ghionoiu, described in on-site coverage by Spadepoker as a local player, came into the final day inside a nine-handed lineup that featured eight Canadian players and one American. The result confirms what has now become the defining pattern of the Playground Circuit stops since the venue rejoined the WSOP Circuit schedule in 2023: the field is almost entirely Canadian, the buy-ins are accessible by international standards, the prize money is significant, and the satellite route in from a regulated online platform is consistently the most efficient way for an Ontario player to enter.
The Final Table
The nine players who made the official final table all guaranteed themselves at least C$30,000, and the heads-up bracket between Ghionoiu and runner-up Daniel Tsipris carried a swing of C$135,001 from second to first. The full final table results, per WSOP.com's official tournament page, were as follows:
| Place | Player | Country | Prize (C$) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Daniel Ghionoiu | Canada | 370,001 |
| 2 | Daniel Tsipris | Canada | 235,000 |
| 3 | Sylvain Siebert | Canada | 164,600 |
| 4 | Qi Hu | Canada | 115,000 |
| 5 | Corbin Avery | United States | 80,000 |
| 6 | Alexandre Oberson | Canada | 60,000 |
| 7 | Christopher Clark | Canada | 47,000 |
| 8 | Eric Gabriel Yanovsky | Macao | 38,000 |
| 9 | Wing Tat Yeung | Canada | 30,000 |
For Ghionoiu, the C$370,001 first prize is a career-defining number. The win exceeded his cumulative live-tournament earnings prior to Monday, which Spadepoker reported at "more than 600 thousand dollars," and gives him his first piece of WSOPC hardware. He follows a now-familiar template at this venue: a Quebec-resident player works the local cash and tournament economy at Playground for several years, builds modest results, and then takes down a Circuit Main Event in his home room.
How This Stop Compares to April
The May 2026 Playground stop is the second of three WSOP Circuit stops scheduled at the venue this year. The first ran from March 23 to April 7 and was, on every measurable axis, larger than the May stop. Toronto's Allen Shen won that earlier Main Event for C$605,001 from a 1,781-entry field that generated a C$4,144,323 prize pool, in what was, at the time, the largest first prize on the Circuit. The May stop attracted roughly 57 per cent of the spring field, a softer turnout that reflects the standard pattern for the second of three annual Playground stops: spring and autumn carry the headline numbers, mid-year sits in the middle. The November 2 to 17 stop later this year is expected to outdraw the May numbers again, particularly with the WSOP Super Circuit Canada attached to it.
That said, 1,022 entries at C$2,500 is a substantial result by any continental standard. It is larger than the field that most US-based Circuit stops produce, and the C$370,001 first prize is competitive with the high-end Circuit Main Event payouts at the larger US venues. Anyone who closed out April expecting the May stop to fall off a cliff was wrong on the data.
Tucci Takes the Colossus, Nabil the Mini
Beyond the Main Event, two secondary results from the May 2026 stop deserve attention. The C$1,000 NLH Colossus, which played out from May 17 through May 21, drew 845 entries and produced a C$756,275 prize pool. Franco Tucci took it down for C$116,000, securing his fifth career WSOPC ring and, more notably, his second of the 2026 calendar year. Tucci's heads-up opponent, Mauro Palmieri, took C$74,000.
The Mini Main Event, a C$400 buy-in five-day grind that ran concurrently with much of the festival, was Playground's biggest field of the festival at 1,419 entries and was won by Ben-Naoum Nabil for an undisclosed first prize from a C$489,555 prize pool. The Mini was the satellite-friendly anchor of the festival, designed deliberately to capture the recreational segment that the C$2,500 Main Event prices out.
The remainder of the schedule produced ring winners across the spread of Mystery Bounty, Progressive Bounty, Mega Stack, Monster Stack, Senior, Ladies and PLO formats. The full list of May 2026 Playground ring winners, per WSOP.com, is: Theodore Sotiropoulos, Paolo Tana, Ben-Naoum Nabil, Khaly Dang, Tianhua Xu, Jean-Francois Betournay, Wissam Alkhoury, Yaofei Feng, Franco Tucci, Armen Kourken Afarian, Jose Seba, Daniel Ghionoiu, David Goldfarb, Marie Grondin, and Naghibollah Noori.
The Ontario Pathway
For the Ontario player reading this on a Thursday morning in late May, the Playground result restates a now-familiar piece of operational reality. The Mohawk Territory of Kahnawake is a roughly six-hour drive from Toronto and is reachable by direct flight from Pearson into Montreal-Trudeau in about 95 minutes. The C$2,500 Main Event buy-in is, in Ontario poker terms, a meaningful weekend commitment but not a high-roller event, and it sits at a price point that has produced repeat Ontario winners over the last three years.
The satellite economics matter even more than the geography. GGPoker Ontario, the only one of our six regulated rooms licensed to run official WSOP and WSOPC satellites, fed seats into the May Main Event for buy-ins as low as C$1 in the preliminary tiers. The reference case for the satellite economy here remains Pickering's Jacob Hobday, who in August 2025 turned a C$75 GGPoker satellite into the WSOP Circuit Montreal Main Event title for C$446,400, his second WSOPC ring.
For the November stop, which will be staged as the WSOP Super Circuit Canada with a C$10 million guaranteed Main Event, GGPoker Ontario satellites will once again be the only regulated Ontario route. The May result is a useful proof point. Most of the players in Monday's top thirty cashes had to qualify, travel and risk something to be there. The Ontario player who wants to follow the same path has a clearer template now than at any point since the regulated market opened.
What Happens Next
Ghionoiu's win brings the May 2026 Playground stop to a clean close, and the venue's tournament calendar shifts back toward its regular live cash-game schedule until the autumn. Several of Monday's top-30 finishers have already indicated they will travel to Las Vegas for portions of the 2026 World Series of Poker, which opened on May 26 and runs through July 15. The bigger date on the Canadian poker calendar is now the WSOP Super Circuit Canada, the August 24 to September 9 festival at Playground that will host the largest live tournament Canada has ever staged.
For Daniel Ghionoiu, Monday's win delivers two things at once: the first piece of WSOPC hardware in a career that has been building quietly at Playground for years, and the financial freedom to play a deeper schedule than has been previously available to him. Both will matter as the Canadian summer settles in.