Canadian Charles “LaughingStorm” La Boissonniere finished fifth at the 2026 World Series of Poker Online Main Event on GGPoker for US$1,389,754 on the night of Tuesday, September 22, banking the largest recorded cash of the tournament by a Canadian and closing out a 6,008-entry, US$28,538,000 prize pool that Ontario’s ring-fenced online poker players had no regulated path to enter. Ukraine’s Andrii Novak won the event for US$3,931,259 and a first WSOP bracelet, per the final-table report published by PokerNews.
The result lands two weeks before the Supreme Court of Canada is scheduled to hear the Attorney General of Ontario cross-border iGaming reference on Tuesday, October 7, and thirteen days before Ontario’s parallel WSOP Online Ontario Main Event fires on Monday, October 5 with a CA$1-million guarantee. That guarantee is the largest ever attached to an Ontario-only online tournament, but its dollar magnitude is roughly one-twenty-fifth of the dot-com Main Event prize pool that Ontario players spent Monday and Tuesday watching from the wrong side of a regulatory fence.
The Final Table
The Main Event was Event #28 of the 2026 WSOP Online series on GGPoker, buy-in US$5,000, guarantee US$25,000,000. It drew 6,008 entries and generated an actual prize pool of US$28,538,000, per PokerNews. Day 2 began with 608 returning players and finished with a nine-handed final table led into the last session by Novak. La Boissonniere entered the final table with the fourth-largest stack. He was eliminated in fifth when he opened ace-jack of clubs under the gun and called all in against Novak’s three-bet with pocket threes. A jack came in the window, a three fell alongside it, and La Boissonniere was drawing dead by the turn, per the PokerNews hand-by-hand.
| Rank | Player | Country | Prize (US$) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Andrii Novak | Ukraine | $3,931,259 |
| 2 | Simon Beckmann | Austria | $3,030,486 |
| 3 | Moyan “JinWanDalaoHu36” Chen | China | $2,336,938 |
| 4 | Fernando “liano96” Liano | Austria | $1,802,141 |
| 5 | Charles “LaughingStorm” La Boissonniere | Canada | $1,389,754 |
| 6 | Pavlo “filthiest” Yakovliev | Ukraine | $1,071,761 |
| 7 | Arian “Who Am I” Hassankashani | Hong Kong | $826,555 |
| 8 | Yury “Ex Nadinsky” Nadinsky | Kazakhstan | $637,476 |
| 9 | Pablo Silva | Brazil | $491,676 |
Source: PokerNews final-table report, September 23. Country designations reflect the GGPoker client at time of registration. Novak also received a US$30,000 Super Pass to the 2026 WSOP Paradise Super Main Event courtesy of GGPoker.
Ontario Was Absent From the Field by Design
La Boissonniere played the Main Event on the international GGPoker.com client, not on GGPoker Ontario. That distinction is not incidental. Under the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario licensing regime that took effect on April 4, 2022, every registered peer-to-peer poker platform serving the province operates a closed player pool restricted to individuals physically located in Ontario. Cross-border shared liquidity is not currently permitted between the Ontario ring-fenced market and any other jurisdiction, whether interprovincial or international, per Pokerfuse’s WSOP Main Event qualifier guide.
The result is that an Ontario resident who wanted to fire the US$5,000 dot-com WSOP Online Main Event on Monday, September 21 had no legally regulated route to do so from within the province. To enter, an Ontario player would need to be physically located outside Ontario at the time of registration and play. Novak, Beckmann, Chen, Liano, La Boissonniere, and every other player in the 6,008-entry field played from jurisdictions where GGPoker.com is authorised. Ontario is not one of them.
Ontario players who wanted a WSOP bracelet shot in September did have a route, but it is a smaller one. The 2026 WSOP Online Ontario series on GGPoker Ontario runs from September 13 through October 5, with eight bracelet events and a headline CA$1,000 buy-in, CA$1,000,000 guarantee Main Event on the final Monday, per prior OntarioPoker.com coverage. That guarantee doubles last year’s CA$500,000 headline and sets the largest ever attached to an Ontario-only online tournament. It is, by any measure, a meaningful increment for the Ontario grinder base. It is also, at CA$1,000,000, roughly 3.5 percent the size of the US$28,538,000 dot-com pool Ontario players watched from the outside on Monday night.
The Regulatory Question That Frames the Gap
The prize-pool differential is not, in isolation, a policy story. Ontario has roughly fifteen million residents. Its peer-to-peer poker market drew 730 entries into the equivalent 2025 WSOP Online Ontario Main Event on a CA$500,000 guarantee. Sizing gaps of this order are the expected outcome when a single-province regulated market is compared with a global open field. The Ontario question is not whether the gap exists. It is whether the gap is permanent, and that question sits before the Supreme Court of Canada in fourteen days.
The court will hear the Attorney General of Ontario cross-border iGaming reference on Tuesday, October 7 in Ottawa, per iGaming Times’s reporting that draws on the Lottery Daily filing summary. Nine judges will consider whether provinces regulating peer-to-peer poker under the Criminal Code’s provincial gaming provisions may pool players with one another and with jurisdictions outside Canada. Ontario and Alberta will argue that pooling is lawful. Flutter Entertainment, the London-listed parent of PokerStars and FanDuel and the largest peer-to-peer operator in Ontario, will make submissions in support. NSUS Group, the parent of GGPoker, and the Canadian Gaming Association have filed to present oral argument.
Opposing the appeal are the Atlantic Lottery Corporation, the British Columbia Lottery Corporation, Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries and Loto-Québec, which joined the appellant side in April, per the same filing summary. The Mohawk Council of Kahnawà:ke, which operates the Kahnawake Gaming Commission from which several offshore-serving Canadian rooms hold licences, withdrew from the appeal in June.
What is actually at stake on October 7. Nine judges of the Supreme Court of Canada are being asked whether Ontario and Alberta may pool their AGCO- and AGLC-regulated peer-to-peer poker markets with one another and with international operators. A ruling in favour of pooling would allow an Ontario resident to sit at a legal AGCO-regulated table alongside a player physically located in Alberta, Great Britain, Germany or Brazil. A ruling against pooling would freeze the closed-pool structure in place. The ruling would not, on its face, affect other verticals such as sports betting or slots. A decision is not expected before winter.
La Boissonniere, in Context
La Boissonniere is a Canadian tournament regular whose live results include appearances at Playground Poker Club in Kahnawake, at the 2023 WSOP in Las Vegas where he finished fifth in chips going into Day 3 of Event #77, the US$777 Lucky 7s, and at the 2026 PokerStars EPT Monte-Carlo €5,300 Main Event Day 1a, per public Hendon Mob and PokerNews live-reporting records. His nickname on the GGPoker.com client is “LaughingStorm.” His province of residence has not been publicly confirmed. What is not in dispute is that he played the Main Event from a jurisdiction outside Ontario, because there is no other jurisdiction from which he could have played it.
His finish is the second-largest recorded cash by a Canadian in an online Main Event on record, behind only Vanessa Kade’s US$1.5-million win in the 2021 PokerStars Sunday Million 15th Anniversary edition, and it comes on the back of a difficult run of near-misses for the Canadian community in top-tier online majors. Two Canadians, Rami Hammoud of Montreal and Greg Mueller of Vancouver, made the live 2026 WSOP Main Event final table in Las Vegas in August, finishing sixth and fourth for US$1.75 million and US$2.75 million respectively. Both cashes were also outside the Ontario ring-fenced market.
Ontario’s Own October Calendar
Ontario players who want a bracelet shot in the next fortnight have two events remaining in the 2026 WSOP Online Ontario schedule on GGPoker.ca. Event #7, the CA$525 buy-in NLH Bounty Turbo Closer with a CA$200,000 guarantee, fires on Sunday, October 4 at 6:00 p.m. ET. Event #8, the CA$1,000 WSOP Ontario Main Event Day 2 with the record CA$1,000,000 guarantee, fires on Monday, October 5 at 6:00 p.m. ET. Between the two, six of the eight bracelet events remained unreported by WSOP.com’s Ontario series page as of the morning of Wednesday, September 23, ten days after Event #1 concluded. Event winners on the AGCO-regulated Ontario client must play the final table under their real name rather than a screen name and are prohibited from making deals at the final table, per CanadianPoker.com’s coverage. The Main Event champion collects, in addition to the CA$1,000,000-guaranteed cash pool split, a CA$42,000 WSOP Paradise Super Main package covering entry to the US$26,000 Super Main Event in the Bahamas, a thirteen-night stay at Baha Mar from December 5 to 18, a US$10,000 last-longer entry and additional merchandise.
Two days after Ontario’s Main Event concludes, the Supreme Court sits. The relationship between the two calendars is not accidental. The 2026 WSOP Online Ontario Main Event, at CA$1-million guaranteed, is the highest-magnitude regulated online Main Event Ontario has ever run. It is also the smallest such event in the world during its month of publication. Both statements are true. Whether both statements remain true in twelve months depends on nine people in Ottawa.
Reporting draws on the PokerNews final-table report of September 23, on GGPoker.ca’s tournament lobby, on iGaming Times’s coverage of the Supreme Court of Canada cross-border iGaming reference, on Pokerfuse’s WSOP Main Event qualifier guide, on CanadianPoker.com and Hendon Mob live-tournament records, and on prior OntarioPoker.com coverage of the 2026 WSOP Online Ontario series. Player residency is described only where independently verified. No affiliate relationship exists between OntarioPoker.com and any operator named in this report. Illustration is AI-generated for editorial purposes. Nothing in this report is a recommendation to enter, avoid, or wager on any tournament described.