The first WSOP-C of 2025 has come and gone here at Choctaw. Numbers for Event #17: $1,700 Main Event were up from last November as a massive field of 1,070 generated a prize pool of $1,621,050. Many players were paid out over three days, but only eight came back on Monday to finish up.
Just over the summer, Eric Taylor final tabled the WSOP Mystery Bounty online. Unfortunately for him, a distraction or two lead him to falling asleep and finishing the tournament in sixth.
He feared afterwards that another chance for a piece of WSOP-C jewelry would not come for some time, but after a long, grueling heads up match here in Oklahoma, Taylor found himself putting his first WSOP Circuit winner's ring on his finger.
When asked the question as to whether the ring or the $259,721 in prize money meant more, he had a definite answer.
"The ring," he said quickly "it's kinda funny. Earlier this tournament I was taking a little bit of flak for some of the time I was taking preflop on some decisions. This tournament I was focusing a lot on timing. About halfway through heads-up it was getting really grindy. There wasn't a lot of preflop play."
A four-hour heads-up finale
Play slowed down when the tournament hit the heads-up phase, with Taylor and Debbie Lee battling it out for over four hours.
"She didn't make any mistakes, played really good, so I tried to speed some things up in the heads-up match. This time it was to try to throw the timing off from earlier."
"I caught a lot of two pairs over her two pairs," said Taylor , "it happened quite a few times. She made a couple really good calls on my bluffs, she called quite a bit of mine. It was a good battle."
"I've been doing this a long time," Taylor mentioned as far as his poker experience goes "we have a weekly game. I play quite a bit with a lot of people around here. I was waiting for something like this for a long time, I told myself that I would only play the ones that would make a huge score like this. This one feels pretty great."
His next plans are not to crazy with the money.
"I don't travel a lot for poker, I play these events here at Choctaw. It's a really great casino. I also go to Vegas in the summers."
He was glad to learn of the new seat that he also won for WSOP-C 2025 Tournament of Champions, a trip he is very happy to make. With that, the new champion was embraced by his wife and took his new ring before walking to the payout cage.
$1,700 WSOP Circuit Choctaw Main Event - final table results
| Place | Player | Prize |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Eric Taylor | $259,721 |
| 2 | Debbie Lee | $173,145 |
| 3 | Thomas Romeo | $120,563 |
| 4 | Arthur Morris | $85,387 |
| 5 | Cody Bartlett | $61,527 |
| 6 | Kannon McCavit | $45,120 |
| 7 | Changliang Deng | $33,686 |
| 8 | Alain Raad | $25,611 |
Another WSOP Circuit series is currently playing out at Thunder Valley, with all the updates available here at PokerOrg.
