WSOP Bracelet Winner Takes $1.2M Top Prize in $50K PLO Grand Slam
Cesar Garcia opened the first hand at the final table of the Onyx High Roller Series $50,000 PLO Grand Slam and took down the blinds and ante. It was a seemingly insignificant moment, an innocuous pot in what promised to be a long day inside the Onyx Club. But that hand set the stage for what was to follow, for Garcia spent the next several hours raising, and raising, and raising some more.
Garcia came into the final table as a massive chip leader and used his stack to full advantage, bullying the rest of the table on his way to capturing the trophy and $1,200,000 first prize after defeating Gruffudd Pugh-Jones heads-up.
"It means a lot. Right now it feels super tired, because it being a long journey. I came as chip leader to the final table. I ran very well in the tournament. So it’s like a dream. It’s my biggest score, and right now I’m super happy,” Garcia said after rivering a straight on the last hand to clinch the title.
Onyx High Roller Series $50,000 PLO Grand Slam Final Table Results
| Place | Player | Country | Prize |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cesar Garcia | Spain | $1,200,000 |
| 2 | Gruffudd Pugh-Jones | Wales | $840,000 |
| 3 | Filip Aleksic | Austria | $555,000 |
| 4 | Sean Rafael | United States | $430,000 |
| 5 | Nino Pansier | Netherlands | $340,000 |
| 6 | Danielle Noja | Australia | $265,000 |
| 7 | Espen Myrmo | Norway | $210,000 |
Garcia’s strategy at the start of the day was simple: he was going to apply maximum pressure on the rest of the table. He raised preflop in around 80 percent of the hands for the first few levels, taking down countless pots with little resistance. Tablemate Danielle Noja said he was a “Spanish matador” and a “bull in a China shop.” He held more than 60 percent of the chips in play while there were still five players left and threatened to leave the rest of the table in his wake as he coasted to the trophy.
“My strategy, of course, because there were some short stacks, so I have to put a lot of pressure on the middle stacks. And, yeah, my plan was to open most of the hands. I know that the first three, four hours I was opening like 80 percent. Somebody told me that they said it in the live streaming,” Garcia said. “So, yeah, I think that it works. I think that I play my best. I try to put a lot of pressure and it works, so I’m very happy.”
The prize was the biggest of Garcia’s career, which goes back more than a decade. He won a WSOP bracelet in a $2,000 No-Limit Hold’em event in 2016 and made two EPT final tables, including an eighth-place finish in Barcelona last August. Garcia had compiled $2.3 million in live earnings before this event, and this score will push him to the cusp of cracking the top-10 all-time among Spanish players.
Most of his early big scores, though, came in No-Limit Hold’em. It was only in the past few years that Garcia began to focus on PLO tournaments, and he’s quickly built up a record of mastery at the four-card game. He won a €10,000 PLO event at EPT Monte Carlo last year and made the final table of the $50,000 PLO event at the Triton Series in Jeju, South Korea, in September. He also finished in fifth place in the €10,000 Diamond Poker Series Championship in Prague in December.
Garcia has seen the sudden burst of PLO tournaments in recent years and thinks the game will only continue to grow. “So when I started playing poker, I started playing No-Limit. But, like, I don’t know, eight years ago I made a transition. But I was only playing cash, and right now, PLO tournaments are growing a lot,” he said.
“So, yeah, since one year and a half or something, I start playing like a lot of tournaments. I really like it. I like the competition, the emotions that you live in a tournament, and I think that it’s a good moment to start playing PLO tournaments because it’s growing and growing. And hopefully it will be like this a lot of time.”
“I really love Merit. The hotel is amazing. The organization is amazing. The tournament, too. Even the stucture. It was a super good structure. We were super deep at the final table, which is, for me, great. Everything was perfect, and I only have good words for them. Hopefully, I will come again,” he said.
Garcia’s festival wasn’t done just yet, however. He quickly made his way, trophy in hand, downstairs from the Onyx Club to the main tournament room to register for Day 1c of the $25,000 PLO Main Event. Coming off his dominant run here today, he’s proven he’ll be a tough man to beat.
