Windsor, Ontario's James Pillon Wins the WSOP Super Circuit Canadian Championship for CA$335,000 and His Second WSOPC Ring at Playground, Almost Exactly Two Years After His First Playground Main Event Title

By Alex Drummond, Editor-in-Chief · September 4, 2026 · Fact-checked by Maya Chen

KAHNAWAKE, Quebec - James Pillon of Windsor, Ontario has won the WSOP Super Circuit Canadian Championship at Playground Poker Club, closing out Event #4 of the eighteen-event WSOP Super Circuit Canada for CA$335,000 in first-place cash and his second career WSOP Circuit ring. The World Series of Poker's official communications confirmed the win overnight Wednesday, and CanadianPoker.com's Thursday-morning news feed carried the headline. Pillon defeated the surviving pool of Day 2 returnees from the CA$2,300 buy-in event's two Day 1 flights, which fired at Playground on August 31 and September 1 with a CA$500,000 guarantee attached. WSOP.com's public results system has not yet published the full final-table pay-out table or the aggregate entry count as of Thursday morning; the CA$335,000 first-place prize is the sole confirmed cash from the pay-out phase.

The size of the prize is not the story on its own. What makes Pillon's win notable is what it lands next to. The score is his second WSOP Circuit Main-Event-style victory at Playground in almost exactly two years and one week, and the two first-place cheques are separated by CA$1,600. His August 29, 2024 win in the WSOPC Playground Main Event, played on the same casino floor at a CA$1,700 buy-in against 1,503 entries, paid CA$333,420 and marked his first WSOP Circuit ring after eleven prior final tables without a title, per Hendon Mob and PokerNews contemporaneous coverage. On September 3, 2026, on the same casino floor and at a slightly larger buy-in against a smaller but higher-stakes field, he claimed a nearly identical amount and his second ring.

The Numbers

Pillon's Ontario-Circuit Consistency

Pillon's live-tournament ledger is more distinctive for its Playground consistency than for the raw earnings total. Hendon Mob shows his pre-2026 career live-tournament earnings at US$668,420 across a fifteen-year record, and roughly half of that came in the two Playground Main Event runs that book-end this piece. Between them, in April 2025, he finished fourth in the WSOPC Playground Main Event for CA$108,000 out of a 1,414-entry field, per Poker.org and WSOP.com; two weeks later, at the WSOPC Toronto stop, he finished seventh of 2,139 for CA$78,133, per Hendon Mob. That is three consecutive Circuit Main Event final-table-adjacent finishes at Ontario-run stops between August 2024 and April 2025, and a Championship win to open a fourth twelve-month span.

His 2024 Playground first-place cheque more than quadrupled his career earnings at the time, per PokerNews; his 2026 Championship win comes on a cleaner foundation, into which he brings a fully documented Circuit specialty at exactly this venue. Playground is a poker room that has historically been kind to Canadians - roughly 70 to 80 per cent of Playground WSOP Circuit ring events over the last two years have been taken down by Canadian residents, per WSOP.com results - but the two-in-two-and-a-half-years figure at the venue's headline events is a Pillon signature.

Four Canadians in a Row

Pillon's ring is the fourth of the WSOP Super Circuit Canada series to date and the fourth consecutive Canadian to hoist one. The three prior winners were Sebastien Proulx (Event #1 Kickoff, CA$56,000), Daniel Haim (Event #2 Mini Main, CA$185,000 from a Playground record 3,484-entry field), and Frederic Moss (Event #3 Mystery Bounty, CA$90,000 from 1,194 entries). Between them and Pillon, Canadian ring winners have banked CA$666,000 in first-place money through the opening four ring events. Only Pillon comes into the run with a prior WSOPC ring; the other three took their first.

Stoffmaker's Ring, and What We Don't Yet Know

Thursday morning's CanadianPoker.com headline paired Pillon with a second winner named Stoffmaker without identifying which event. The most plausible candidates from the events that closed on September 2 and 3 are Event #5, the CA$1,500 buy-in Pot-Limit Omaha Monster Stack that fired Day 1 on Tuesday against a CA$75,000 guarantee, and Event #6, the CA$1,000 buy-in NLH Progressive Bounty that opened Wednesday against a CA$150,000 guarantee. WSOP.com's public system had not published a verified winner, entry count or pay-out schedule for either event as of Thursday morning. This desk will file a follow-up when those numbers appear. If the winner is Harley Stoffmaker, the WPT Montreal 2024 fourth-place finisher (CA$25,836), it would represent his first WSOP Circuit ring, but that identification is not yet confirmed.

Main Event Day 1A: Negreanu Leads

Event #7, the CA$5,000 Super Circuit Main Event carrying the CA$10-million guarantee that anchors the entire festival, fired its first Day 1 flight at noon local time on Wednesday and played through the night. WSOP's official communications overnight Wednesday into Thursday named Daniel Negreanu, the Toronto-born Poker Hall of Famer and the current WSOP overall Player of the Year favourite, as the Day 1A chip leader. Precise chip counts, aggregate Day 1A entries and survivor totals had not been published on WSOP.com's public system as of Thursday morning.

Day 1B fires at 11:00 a.m. local time on Friday, with Flights 2A and B both opening in the afternoon and running through the weekend. Six Day 1 flights are scheduled across September 3, 4, 5 and 6, with Day 2 on September 7 and the final table on September 9. Estimated entry math for the tournament sits at roughly 2,200 unique entrants to make the CA$10-million guarantee against a CA$5,000 buy-in; based on the Mini Main's 2.65-times over-guarantee performance and the Championship's presumed CA$500,000-plus prize pool, the Main Event has room to overshoot that entry math meaningfully by the close of registration on Day 2.

What Comes Next

Event #8, a CA$2,000 NLH Deepstack Turbo, fires Sunday September 6, and Event #9, a CA$400 NLH Big-O Bounty, opens the same weekend. The full published Super Circuit Canada schedule lists eighteen ring events through September 12. Verified Championship, PLO Monster Stack and Progressive Bounty pay-out tables from Event #4, Event #5 and Event #6 respectively are expected on WSOP.com's public results system through the weekend, along with confirmation of the second and third-place cash for Event #4.

Related Coverage

• Frederic Moss wins WSOPC Canada Mystery Bounty for CA$90,000 (September 2)
• Daniel Haim wins WSOPC Canada Mini Main for CA$185,000 from record 3,484 field
• Sebastien Proulx wins WSOPC Canada Kickoff for CA$56,000
• Mini Main sets Playground record: 3,484 entries and CA$1.5M pool
• PokerStars on FanDuel Ontario launches 61-event Dynasty Series
• Ontario poker tournament schedule

Sources

• World Series of Poker verified X communications overnight Wednesday, September 2 into Thursday, September 3, 2026: "James Pillon 🇨🇦 stayed up until 5 AM and left the Super Circuit Canadian Championship with his second WSOPC ring and CA $335,000."
• CanadianPoker.com news feed, "WSOP Super Circuit Canada: Pillon and Stoffmaker Win as CA$10M Main Event Begins", dated September 3, 2026.
• PokerNews - "Royal Flush Propels James Pillon to WSOPC Playground Main Event Title", September 2, 2024, for the 2024 Main Event context.
• Hendon Mob James Pillon career profile, retrieved September 4, 2026.
• WSOP.com Super Circuit Canada schedule and structure, retrieved September 4, 2026.