button in SafariCyndy Violette Seeks First WSOP Final Table Appearance Since 2015
Cyndy Violette reached nine World Series of Poker (WSOP) final tables from 1999 to 2006, during an era she was widely considered one of the top female poker players in the world.
The 2004 bracelet winner is making a run at her first WSOP final table since 2015, as she runs deep in Event #45: Mixed Omaha/Stud, a tournament that began with 587 entries. Violette, a prominent pro during the poker boom era, reached Day 3 15th in chips out of 24 players.
Mixed Games Grinder
The mixed event will play down to a winner on Tuesday, and it will pay $248,545. For Violette, winning the bracelet would end a 22-year drought and be worth her second-largest career score, and her first of significance since she cashed for $84,570 for 14th place in a 2006 World Poker Tour (WPT) event at Bellagio in Las Vegas.
Violette resides in Las Vegas and previously owned Violette's Vegan, a plant-based vegan restaurant that closed down after COVID. She has no plans to re-enter the restaurant industry.
"It's a tough industry," she said. "I mean, I enjoyed it. It was my dream come true, the kind of thing that I always wanted to do, so that was good."
A former stud player in Atlantic City years ago, Violette is still playing the game she long dominated. But that isn't the only poker variant she thrives in and plays.
"I play a lot of Omaha these days too," Violette said on a Day 3 break.
But she isn't a big fan of no-limit hold'em, at least not cash games.
"I don't play it that much," she said of NLH. "I'll play it in big tournaments and stuff. I like that. I play pot-limit Omaha now."
Violette said she's more focused on cash games than tournaments these days, but is enjoying her deep run at the World Series of Poker. She's been playing "a lot of mixed games" at Wynn Las Vegas and South Point, where she competes in $20/$40 Omaha hi-lo cash games.
The longtime grinder has reached a WSOP final table in seven different poker variants, including a seventh-place finish in a $3,000 No-Limit Hold'em event in 2005. Her most recent final table appearance at the WSOP came in 2015, a ninth-place finish in $1,500 Razz.
Violette, on the second break of Day 3, fell down to just two big bets. But, as she said, "you can build your stack up fast with the way these structures are." At the time of publishing, she had reached the top 13 of a WSOP event for the first time since 2018.
