By Alex Drummond, Editor-in-Chief · June 8, 2026 · Fact-checked by Maya Chen
LAS VEGAS - Kristen Foxen has won her sixth World Series of Poker gold bracelet. The 39-year-old Canadian professional, the all-time career-earnings leader on the women's live tournament money list, defeated American Galen Hall heads-up at Horseshoe and Paris Las Vegas on Sunday night to take down Event #19, the $25,000 High Roller No-Limit Hold'em, for US$1,773,083 in first-place prize money. The bracelet, presented at the trophy ceremony by Foxen's husband and four-time bracelet winner Alex Foxen, arrives less than twenty-four hours after Quebec's Frederic Normand won the first Canadian bracelet of the 2026 World Series of Poker in Event #21 on Saturday night, producing the fastest Canadian back-to-back bracelet conversion in the modern series record. The prior shortest gap, by the published WSOP archive, was approximately seventy-two hours, recorded in the 2024 series.
The Event #19 win is the largest live-tournament prize of Foxen's career and her fourth seven-figure cash in the last twelve months. Her published Hendon Mob career total now sits at approximately US$17-million, the largest career live tournament earnings of any woman in modern poker by some margin. The first-place prize of US$1,773,083, by the official WSOP results page, is the fourth-largest live tournament cash for a female player in the published record. The Foxens, by combined Hendon Mob count, now have approximately US$46-million in combined career live earnings, the largest combined Canadian-American married couple total in the modern era.
The Final Hand
The final hand, played in front of a small live rail at the Horseshoe ESPN main feature table and broadcast on PokerGO on the WSOP standard 150-minute delay, ran as a single all-in confrontation. Hall, who had entered the final day with the chip lead at 16,050,000 and who had spent much of Sunday's bracelet play in front, moved all-in pre-flop with ace of clubs and four of diamonds. Foxen, who had ground the chip mismatch back to roughly even across the early heads-up orbits, called with ace of diamonds and ace of hearts. The board ran out, the dominated kicker did not improve, and the bracelet was decided.
The PokerNews live blog headline, posted shortly after the final all-in, recorded Foxen's quote in the on-stage interview: "I'm just so blessed that I found poker, that I'm able to do this." The same blog, in its published wrap on the bracelet ceremony, characterised the result as the bracelet Foxen herself had said she had been chasing across the prior twelve years of her career. The Canadian had, in PokerNews's reporting, told the desk that several of her prior five bracelets had been won in what she considered lesser events, including ladies-only and mixed-game low-buy-in fields. The Event #19 $25,000 buy-in High Roller, played out over four days against an open field of 345 entries that included most of the modern era's high-roller specialists, was, in Foxen's own framing, the bracelet she could "brag about."
The Final Table Results
The Event #19 final nine paid out across a US$8,107,500 total prize pool, generated by a 345-entry field at the US$25,000 buy-in including twenty-eight late-registering entries above the published estimate. The bracelet day on Sunday took the field from the final six, set the previous evening, to a winner across a single twelve-hour sitting. The full final table breakdown is below.
| Place | Player | Country | Prize (US$) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kristen Foxen | Canada | $1,773,083 |
| 2 | Galen Hall | United States | $1,182,050 |
| 3 | Biao Ding | China | $819,504 |
| 4 | Joey Weissman | United States | $577,326 |
| 5 | Ignacio Moron | Spain | $413,389 |
| 6 | Zdenek Zizka | Czech Republic | $300,942 |
| 7 | Ihar Soika | Belarus | $222,798 |
| 8 | Giuseppe Calio | Argentina | $167,792 |
| 9 | Barak Wisbrod | Israel | $128,585 |
The international weighting of the final nine (United States 2, Canada 1, China 1, Spain 1, Czech Republic 1, Belarus 1, Argentina 1, Israel 1) is consistent with the field-internationalisation pattern this newsroom has been tracking across the 2026 series. Foxen, the lone Canadian, was the only female player at the final table. The Biao Ding third-place finish is the second deep run of the 2026 series for the Chinese professional, after his Sunday-night elimination of Daniel Negreanu from the Round of 16 of Event #7 $25,000 Heads-Up Championship a week earlier.
The Historical Context
Foxen's six career WSOP gold bracelets, won between 2014 and 2026, place her in the top tier of Canadian WSOP winners regardless of gender. The five-bracelet count she carried into Sunday had already been the largest of any female Canadian player in the modern era. The sixth bracelet, on the published WSOP archive, pushes her past Cyndy Violette and Annie Duke at the modern-era Canadian female bracelet count and into outright second place on the all-time female list, behind only Vanessa Selbst's seven-bracelet career total.
The PokerNews wrap also recorded the operator's stated note that Foxen is the first woman to win an open-field WSOP gold bracelet event since 2021. The intervening five-year gap, by the published archive, included multiple deep runs by Foxen and others at open events, but no female bracelet outside the dedicated Ladies Championship and women's-event fields. The 2026 series, on this single-event count, breaks a five-year drought in the women's open-field WSOP record.
The four seven-figure cashes Foxen has logged across the past twelve months also fit the broader trajectory. Her January 2026 victory at Event #4 of the U.S. Poker Open in Las Vegas for US$432,000, her 2025 deep cashes at the WPT and PCA, and her runner-up finishes across the Triton high-roller schedule have, together, produced the most consistent twelve-month female live tournament record of the modern era. The Hendon Mob record currently lists her US$17-million career total ahead of Vanessa Selbst's US$11.85-million, ahead of Nadya Magnus and several other female all-time leaders by similarly wide margins.
The Back-to-Back Canadian Day
The June 6 and June 7 calendar at the 2026 World Series of Poker has now produced the fastest back-to-back Canadian bracelet conversion in the modern WSOP era. Frederic Normand's wire-to-wire Day 3 victory at Event #21 $1,500 Pot-Limit Omaha Hi-Lo Eight-or-Better for US$235,377 on Saturday night ended a twelve-day Canadian bracelet drought to open the series. Foxen's Sunday-night win at Event #19 $25,000 High Roller for US$1,773,083 added a second Canadian bracelet within approximately twenty-three hours. The combined Canadian bracelet-day total of US$2,008,460 is the largest single-twenty-four-hour Canadian payout at any modern WSOP series.
The pattern fits the broader trajectory this newsroom has been tracking across the four-year history of the regulated Ontario online poker market. The Canadian-flagged player count at the WSOP has been rising each summer since the April 2022 launch of the AGCO-licensed regulated provincial market. The bracelet conversion rate, in any one-week window, fluctuates well below or above the multi-year median. The back-to-back Sunday-into-Monday conversion of the first two Canadian bracelets of the 2026 series is consistent with that broader pattern, although the speed of the back-to-back is unique to this series.
The Ontario Read
The provincial significance of the Saturday-into-Sunday Canadian back-to-back sits in the same pattern this newsroom has been tracking across the 2026 series. The Canadian-flagged player count at the WSOP continues to be on pace for a multi-year high. The bracelet count, after the Foxen-Normand back-to-back, now stands at two, ahead of the pace recorded in the 2024 series (two bracelets by Day 13) and the 2025 series (one bracelet by Day 13). The trajectory across the first eight to twelve weeks of the 2026 series will determine whether the back-to-back is a single-event anomaly or the start of a record-pace Canadian summer.
For Ontario players who play their poker on the regulated provincial sites, the practical pathway into a Foxen-style live deep run runs through the AGCO-registered satellite operators. GGPoker Ontario remains the only AGCO-registered room running official WSOP and WSOPC satellites for players physically located in the province. PokerStars on FanDuel, which launched on the regulated Ontario market on Wednesday on Playtech iPoker software, has not announced any WSOP satellite path. The first head-to-head Sunday tournament weekend of the new four-operator landscape, played out on June 7, produced its own data points across the GGPoker Ontario and FanDuel Poker Ontario Sunday lineups, the early reads of which will be analysed in the May iGaming Ontario monthly market performance report due to be published in late June.
The Foxen sixth-bracelet result, on the broader Canadian poker pattern, is the kind of record-setting individual victory that, by its nature, occurs irregularly. It is also, on the present trajectory, the kind of result that the regulated Ontario online poker market continues to channel into the live tournament circuit at a higher rate each year. The next Canadian bracelet of the 2026 series, on the early-twelve-day pace and the equity tables, will likely arrive within the next two weeks of the schedule. The 2026 WSOP Main Event begins July 2.