Toronto Cybersecurity Engineer Mayukh Chakraborty Wins the WSOP Super Circuit Canada Main Event at Playground Kahnawake for CA$1,500,000 and His First WSOP Circuit Gold Ring on His Third Recorded Live Tournament Cash; Fellow Canadian Benjamin Veenstra of Edmonton Runner-Up for CA$1,000,000; Four-Time WSOP Bracelet Winner Chance Kornuth of the United States Fourth for CA$600,000

Mayukh Chakraborty, a North York cybersecurity engineer with a full-time job, two very young children, and just CA$3,260 in career live tournament earnings across two prior cashes, has won the WSOP Super Circuit Canada Main Event at Playground Poker Club in Kahnawake for CA$1,500,000 and his first WSOP Circuit gold ring, closing out the largest live poker tournament in Canadian history and one of the most improbable first-place stories the WSOP Circuit has produced in North America this decade.

Chakraborty defeated fellow Canadian Benjamin Veenstra, a twenty-four-year-old cash-game professional from Edmonton, in an all-Canadian heads-up finale on the evening of Thursday, September 10, at the Playground Poker Club on the Kahnawake Mohawk Territory outside Montreal. Veenstra held the chip advantage when the last hand played, but Chakraborty won a high-card flip to claim the title, according to WSOP live updates. Veenstra collected CA$1,000,000 as runner-up. The winning stakeholder came from an unusual place: Chakraborty said he had paid the CA$5,000 entry directly, without going through a satellite, and had taken a single week off work to travel to Montreal for the trip.

The Numbers Behind Canada's Largest-Ever Live Poker Tournament

The CA$5,000 Main Event drew 2,844 entries and generated a prize pool of CA$13,082,400, more than tripling the previous Canadian Main Event record of CA$4,450,500 set at Playground in August 2025, according to Poker.pro. Four hundred and twenty-eight players were paid. The event exceeded its CA$10,000,000 guarantee, promised by Playground, by more than CA$3,000,000. The whole WSOP Super Circuit Canada festival, which runs at Playground from August 26 through September 12, distributed more than CA$18,862,400 across the schedule, comfortably surpassing the previous Canadian record of CA$15,540,000 for a single tournament series.

"My days are very busy. I have a full-time job and two very young children, so I don't often have time to play," Chakraborty told La Presse. He said he had told his family and friends not to travel to Kahnawake unless he reached the final table. The decision to come, he said, was made at the last minute.

The Final Table: Seven Canadians, One Bracelet Winner, One Twenty-Four-Year-Old Cash Grinder

Nine players returned Thursday to play out the final table. Seven were Canadian. The other two seats were held by Jack Salter, a forty-four-year-old English tournament professional with more than USD$9,000,000 in career live earnings and a two-decade record on the circuit, and Felipe Baraky of Brazil. The one American at the table, Chance Kornuth, was the marquee name and the pre-final-table favourite by resume, with four World Series of Poker bracelets from Las Vegas and a reputation as one of the toughest tournament players of his generation.

Chakraborty entered the final day as chip leader with 25.63 million, per counts published by Pokeren.nl. Kornuth was second with 24.13 million. Veenstra had 20.83 million. Behind them sat Bussieres, Baraky, Renaud, Salter, Lane and Mansukh. Paul Klann, who had led the final thirty into Wednesday, had already gone out in thirteenth for CA$100,000. Rayan Chamas, the earlier Day 3 chip leader, went out in twentieth for CA$65,000.

Full Final-Table Results

Source: WSOP.com Event #7 official result; final-table narrative details drawn from La Presse (Simon Gravel, September 11) and Poker.pro (Jason Glatzer, September 11).

Robert Renaud, a former professional futsal player from Quebec, was the first player eliminated from the televised final table, running kings into aces for ninth and CA$150,000. "There's nothing I could have done," Renaud told La Presse. Deven Lane fell eighth for CA$200,000. Parth Mansukh, another Canadian, went out seventh for CA$300,000. Baraky, the Brazilian, was eliminated sixth for CA$400,000.

The fifth-place bust of Jonathan Bussieres, the Quebec player and one of the vocal room favourites, guaranteed the second all-Canadian one-two finish in the field, along with Chakraborty's own presence in the top three. Bussieres collected CA$500,000. The fourth-place elimination of Kornuth, whose finish left him CA$600,000 richer but denied him what would have been the biggest first-place tournament victory of a career already stacked with WSOP finals, cleared the path to a three-handed battle that Chakraborty later described to La Presse as a "war of attrition."

Salter's Third, and Then the Heads-Up

Salter, third for CA$750,000, is a study in the tournament ecosystem the WSOP built at Playground for this festival. He came into the final table ninth in chips. He came out third. He said, per La Presse, that both Chakraborty and Veenstra had played "excellently, with good composure and behaving as though they had already been in similarly difficult situations." He said he planned to take a two-week vacation in Costa Rica after the event, and had every intention of not playing poker while he was there.

The heads-up match between the two Canadians ran late. Veenstra, the twenty-four-year-old Edmonton cash-game professional, described himself to La Presse as strong on live reads and short on late-tournament theory, and said he had not slept the night before the final table out of excitement. Chakraborty, less rested by his own account and less experienced by resume, said he thought he had bluffed profitably through the tournament because his opponents had underestimated him. The final hand, per WSOP live updates cited by Poker.pro, put Veenstra at a slight chip advantage in a survival spot, but Chakraborty won the high-card flip. The ring, and the CA$1,500,000, were his.

The Payout Dispute That Cost Chakraborty CA$500,000

The prize Chakraborty took home was not the one printed on the original structure sheet. Approximately one hour into Day 3, after players were already in the money, tournament organizers discovered that an older payout model had been loaded into the reporting system, according to SpadePoker. That model had allocated CA$2,000,000 to first place and forty-seven per cent of the prize pool to the nine-handed final table. WSOP representatives intervened and redistributed the structure mid-tournament, dropping first place to CA$1,500,000 and the final-table share to forty-two and a half per cent, and redirecting the remainder to the lower finishes. The change reportedly produced some player discontent. Chakraborty's win, at the top of the revised schedule, is CA$500,000 lighter than it would have been under the original.

What This Result Means for Ontario

The provincial angle here is unusually clean. Chakraborty is not a professional poker player. He is a Toronto engineer, in cybersecurity, with a full-time job and a family. Woodbine Casino in North York is the room he plays at, two or three times a month, at cash-game stakes. He is not a satellite qualifier and did not come to Kahnawake on a package. He paid his own way and took a week off to do it, and returned with the largest single first-place figure ever awarded at a Canadian poker tournament.

The result also caps a festival in which Canadian players have dominated the ring events at Playground almost start to finish. Sebastien Proulx, Anton Haim, Chad Moss, James Pillon (of Windsor), Harley Stoffmaker, Scott Carragher (of Charlottetown), Daniel Tsipris and now Chakraborty are the Canadian ring winners of the eight completed non-Main-Event rings, plus this Main Event. Only Paul Meiners of the United States, at Event #6, broke the streak. Combined Canadian aggregate first-place takings at the festival, before the Main Event, stood at CA$903,600; Chakraborty's CA$1,500,000 more than doubles it in one result. Veenstra's CA$1,000,000, Bussieres's CA$500,000, Mansukh's CA$300,000, Lane's CA$200,000, and Renaud's CA$150,000 push the aggregate Canadian Main Event final-table haul to CA$3,650,000.

The WSOP Super Circuit Canada festival continues at Playground through September 12 with the CA$14,000 GGMillion$ High Roller and the closing Turbo Bounty. Ring events at other WSOP Circuit stops in North America, and the corresponding online events at licensed Ontario poker operators, form the rest of the WSOP Circuit calendar into the fall. Chakraborty's next tournament date, if any, is not stated.

The Larger Picture: Ontario's Live and Online Poker Weekend

The Main Event finish arrives at the start of Ontario's biggest online poker month of the year. GGPoker Ontario's WSOP Online Ontario 2026 series fires Sunday, September 13, with eight bracelets on the schedule and a record CA$1,000,000 guarantee on the Main Event scheduled for October 5, per Pokerfuse. PokerStars on FanDuel's September Dynasty Series in Ontario has already begun. For Ontario players considering an online run this fall, review pages for the province's licensed operators are here: GGPoker Ontario, PokerStars Ontario, bet365 Poker Ontario and partypoker Ontario. All four are AGCO-licensed for Ontario players physically located in the province.

Reporting draws on the Poker.pro tournament wrap by Jason Glatzer (September 11, 2026), the La Presse feature by Simon Gravel (September 11, 2026), the official WSOP.com result for Event #7, chip-count and payout data from Pokeren.nl and PokerNews, and the payout-structure controversy first documented by SpadePoker. No affiliate relationship exists between OntarioPoker.com and any subject of this report. Illustration is AI-generated for editorial purposes; no photograph of the winner or the venue is depicted.