Hall-of-Famer Nick Schulman's Eighth Bracelet Denies Calgary's Clayton Mozdzen the First Canadian H.O.R.S.E. Gold; Mixed-Game Regular Banks a Career-Best US$122,206 Runner-Up Cash

By Alex Drummond, Editor-in-Chief · June 13, 2026 · Fact-checked by Maya Chen

LAS VEGAS - The Friday-night final-table run at Event #37, the WSOP $1,500 H.O.R.S.E., did not produce a Canadian bracelet. Clayton Mozdzen, the Calgary-based mixed-game regular who carried a 3,105,000-chip lead and a 26-big-bet position into Friday's bracelet day, finished runner-up to Poker Hall of Fame inductee Nick Schulman in a heads-up confrontation that the H.O.R.S.E. table audience had been calling the favourable matchup for the Calgary player. The opening exchanges, on the published PokerNews live coverage feed, went the other direction. Schulman raced out to a five-to-one chip lead inside the opening rotation of the heads-up cap. Mozdzen found a pair of double-ups across the next two orbits to claw back the count. The final hand, on the seventh-street card of a Seven-Card Stud orbit, produced a cooler. Schulman had reeled in his man on the river. The eighth bracelet of Schulman's career, his first since his 2025 Poker Hall of Fame induction, was decided. Mozdzen's career-best US$122,206 runner-up cash, the second-best Canadian payout of the 2026 series after Kristen Foxen's US$1,773,083 high-roller win, is the consolation.

The Canadian bracelet tally for the 2026 World Series of Poker, after Friday night's runner-up finish, holds at three gold bracelets and a combined US$2,395,570 in payouts across the Normand-Foxen-Alcindor cluster of June 6 through June 8. The Mozdzen finish, on the dollar count, lifts the Canadian total cash at the 2026 series to US$2,517,776 across four notable cashes in nine calendar days. Daniel Negreanu, the parallel Canadian bid that this newsroom previewed on Thursday morning, busted Event #36, the $100,000 High Roller, on Day 2 and was not part of Friday's nine-handed bracelet finale. Brazil's Yuri Dzivielevski won the $100,000 event for US$2,841,432 and a sixth career bracelet, on a 115-entry field that lifted the prize pool to US$11,040,000, the second-largest buy-in event of the 2026 series after the $250,000 Super High Roller.

The Heads-Up Cap

The Mozdzen-Schulman heads-up, on the published PokerNews live blog, ran a short but eventful set of orbits. Mozdzen entered heads-up play after eliminating Jonathan Nebbout in third on a Seven-Card Stud Eight-or-Better hand. The chip lead at the start of heads-up was on Mozdzen's side, on a roughly two-to-one count. Schulman, by the post-game framing of the bracelet-day live-coverage feed, identified an opening five-orbit window in which his Stud reading was running at a higher confidence level than his Limit Hold'em or Razz reading. He pressed across those orbits, won three of the next five large pots without showdown, and turned the two-to-one heads-up deficit into a five-to-one lead inside the opening rotation cycle.

Mozdzen's two double-ups came on consecutive Razz hands against the upswing. The first was a clean low-board pickup. The second was a small-pot push-and-call that lifted Mozdzen back into the 25-to-75 chip-share range. The Stud-Eight orbit that opened the next rotation cycle was the structural pivot. Schulman opened a small pot, picked up on third street with the high-card show, and built a multi-bet pot through fourth, fifth and sixth streets. The seventh-street card, by the live-blog wrap, produced the cooler. Schulman's seventh-card improvement was the closer. Mozdzen could not get out of the way on a hand he had earlier in the seven-card sequence. The chip stack shifted entirely. The bracelet ceremony, by the wrap timestamp, ran approximately 11 hours from the Day 3 starting bell at 1 p.m. local time.

The Schulman Read

Schulman's eighth-bracelet milestone, on the published WSOP archive, places him in the top tier of the active-bracelet leaderboard. The Poker Hall of Fame inductee, who entered the H.O.R.S.E. event with seven bracelets across the 2009, 2014, 2017, 2024, and prior years and who was inducted into the Hall at the 2025 WSOP induction ceremony, is now the active-bracelet leader among Hall-of-Famers who took their first bracelet in the modern post-2003 era. Schulman, in his bracelet-ceremony remarks on the PokerNews wrap, framed the win as a delayed validation of the Hall of Fame nod. "I dedicate a lot of my life to the game," Schulman said. "I feel like I am just getting into my prime, I don't want to be the delusional sort of games player hanging on, but I can feel it, that I'm finally starting to kind of come into my own a little bit."

The Schulman-on-the-rebound storyline, on the prior published live-coverage commentary, has been a multi-year arc. Schulman's commentary work at the WSOP feature table, on the Pokergo and PokerNews broadcast booths, has been a substantial commercial commitment that has constrained his playing time across the 2022, 2023 and 2024 series. The 2025 Hall of Fame induction, on the framing he gave the PokerNews wrap, was treated as a "good decision" by the selection committee that he wanted to validate on the felt. The H.O.R.S.E. eighth bracelet, on Friday night, is the validation. "They're always also special," Schulman said of the bracelet ceremony. "But I guess it's cool to show that, you know, they made a good decision." Schulman's post-victory remarks also touched the Player of the Year race ("Player of the Year has never motivated me because I just don't have that endurance to just go") and the Phil Hellmuth all-time bracelet lead ("There's no target number, but it's certainly not surpassing Hellmuth. That's just not on my mind. But, you know, if we get close, I might have to get his ass"). The lighter notes ran to the Saturday night sports docket. "Tomorrow [is] Saturday, the UFC card as well [as the NBA Finals], so I'm going to lose a bunch of money there," Schulman said. The closing line was a New York basketball celebration: "Knicks in five BABY!"

The Mozdzen Read

Mozdzen's runner-up finish, on his career arc, is the largest single live-tournament cash he has recorded. The Calgary-based mixed-game regular entered the 2026 series with US$726,977 in career WSOP earnings on the published player profile, five WSOP final tables, and 42 cashes. The 2026 series, before Friday night, had already added the fifth-place finish in Event #20, the $1,500 Dealer's Choice that Jeff Madsen won for US$161,057, with Mozdzen exiting in fifth for US$34,588. The H.O.R.S.E. runner-up, at US$122,206, more than triples the prior career-best from his 16th-place finish at the 2025 $25,000 H.O.R.S.E. Championship for US$51,020 last summer. The Canadian H.O.R.S.E. bracelet count, on the published WSOP open-event archive, remains at zero. The first Canadian H.O.R.S.E. bracelet bid that Mozdzen carried into the final-three, on the live blog account, fell short on a single Stud-Eight orbit.

The mixed-game-specialist tilt of the Mozdzen profile, by his own admission across the 2025 and 2026 series interview clips, has been the consistent through-line. The Day 2 chip-build at the H.O.R.S.E., on the published 171-to-14 cut, drove him from second in chips entering Day 2 at 383,000 to chip-leading the final 14 at 3,105,000, a roughly eightfold chip-stack growth across a single eight-hour session. The Day 3 bracelet day, on the published-blog account, did not produce the matching second-leg performance. Mozdzen's chip-leading position eroded across the early levels of Day 3, with Schulman and Joe Brindle picking up significant pots through the late-stage Limit Hold'em and Stud orbits. The five-handed period, by the live coverage feed, ran for almost three hours of grinding without significant chip-stack shifts. The four-handed exit of Joe Brindle in fourth place stretched the chip lead away from Mozdzen and into Schulman's stack, where the heads-up cap then ran the seven-card cooler.

The Canadian Picture Through Day 19

The 2026 World Series of Poker has now produced three Canadian bracelets and a combined US$2,395,570 in gold-event payouts in 19 calendar days, against the prior decade's median of one or two Canadian bracelets through the same Day 19 marker. The Foxen-Normand-Alcindor 72-hour cluster on June 6 through June 8 remains the largest single Canadian payout cluster on the modern WSOP record. The Mozdzen runner-up at Event #37, on the dollar tally, lifts the Canadian total notable-cash count at the 2026 series to US$2,517,776 across four cashes inside the open-event archive. Daniel Negreanu's $100,000 High Roller exit on Day 2 was the parallel Canadian bid that did not convert. The 2026 Canadian total live earnings at the WSOP, on the running count maintained by this newsroom's Canadian player tracker, will be re-tallied for the next published update at the close of Day 21.

The $100,000 High Roller Wrap

The parallel Friday-night narrative, Event #36 the $100,000 High Roller, did not include a Canadian. Daniel Negreanu, the Toronto-and-Las-Vegas pro who had bagged 1,190,000 chips at the end of Wednesday night's Day 1, busted Day 2 before the nine-handed Friday-restart was set. Christopher Nguyen, the Austrian-flagged regular who had bagged 17,200,000 chips and the chip lead into Day 3, finished runner-up to Brazil's Yuri Dzivielevski. The bracelet ceremony, on the PokerNews Event #36 live blog, recorded Dzivielevski's victory hand as pocket nines against Mulder's flopped-set runner-runner equity. The final-table prize pool ran the US$11,040,000 across nine guaranteed payouts of US$255,491 or higher, with the top three each clearing US$1.3 million. Dzivielevski's gold is his sixth career bracelet, lifting the Brazilian to a tie for the second-most bracelets among Latin American players.

Day 19 Schedule

The Saturday Day 19 schedule, on the published WSOP calendar, runs 10 events. Event #38, the $500 COLOSSUS No-Limit Hold'em that drew 36,547 entries across Day 1a, Day 1b and Day 1c flights and a $14.6-million prize pool, plays its Day 2 from 11 a.m. local with the projected 600-to-700-player survival count returning. Event #40, the $1,500 Razz, plays Day 2 from 12 p.m. local. Event #41, the $1,500 Mystery Bounty No-Limit Hold'em, opens at 10 a.m. local with a published projected entry count in the 3,000-to-4,000 range. Event #39, the $5,000 Seniors High Roller, plays Day 2 from 12 p.m. local with the David "ODB" Baker defence to chase. Five additional events open across the day. The next prospective Canadian deep-stack story, on the prior cash-history pattern, is the Razz Day 2 chip-count post, which sometimes carries one or two Canadian mixed-game regulars deep into the second day.

The Ontario Read

None of the Canadian players associated with the 2026 series gold-event run, by published residence, is an Ontario resident. The Ontario read on the H.O.R.S.E. runner-up and the broader Canadian 2026 series push remains the qualifier-pipeline read. The largest single feeder of Canadian recreational poker volume into the live tournament floor remains the regulated provincial Ontario market, and the largest single Ontario-only qualifier path into a WSOP-branded event for the rest of the 2026 calendar remains the GGPoker Ontario satellite ladder to the August Super Circuit Canada at Playground in Kahnawake. The Ontario player physically located in the province who wants to follow Mozdzen's open-buy-in $1,500 H.O.R.S.E. path next year will, on the present regulatory map, take a CAD-denominated cash-game roll-up through the AGCO-licensed Ontario operator base and post the buy-in at the Las Vegas cage, in fiat or through the new WSOP-Solana payment rail that does not extend to AGCO-licensed deposits in the regulated provincial market. The 2026 WSOP Main Event begins on July 2.

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