Now that’s how you win a record-breaking Main Event.
He's been playing full-time for just over two years, and with what he says is an average buy-in of $100. Jacob Hobday, of Pickering, Ontario, spun one of those buy-ins into a massive win in the largest WSOP Circuit Main Event in history at Playground in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Hobday won his way into the event on a single bullet in a $75 satellite on GGPoker and parlayed it into victory in the $2,500 WSOPC Playground Main Event for a record $620,000 CAD first prize.
The event drew 1,978 entries to build a massive $4,450,500 CAD prize pool, the largest in WSOP Circuit Main Event history. Hobday also won the Main Event champion’s ring and a $5,000 USD package to WSOP Paradise in the Bahamas.
The sequel blows away the original
The ring is Hobday’s second of his career, following a $53,197 CAD victory in a $400 event at WSOPC Calgary in 2023. He’s since had another sizeable five-figure score, but nothing quite like what he’s earned this weekend at Playground, something he will need time to process.
“Honestly, I don’t even know. My biggest score before this was around $60,000, and this is just absolutely insane,” Hobday told us afterwards.
While he acknowledges that the money is life-changing and bankroll-changing, he says he won’t be relocating his regular tournament action from his hometown Pickering Casino Resort to the PokerGO studio just yet.
“Yeah, this absolutely changes a lot. I’m not gonna go right away and start firing high rollers; I don’t think I’m ready for that. I probably ran better than I am, to be honest.”
The tao of rungood
While Hobday knew that he had good fortune on his side throughout the tournament, he explained how it was a lot of smaller things that helped propel him to victory.
“Running good’s not always about winning the all-ins," he said. "It’s about your three-bet bluffs getting through and your C-bets getting through, especially on final tables. Just taking it down when you’re opening up with 14-15 big blinds, just taking it with a C-bet, that’s running well.”
That last point is exactly what Hobday had to do on Day 3 as he entered the day in 17th place out of 18 returning players, and with just 12 big blinds to his name.
His day saw nothing dramatic in the early going; he was simply doing what he needed to do to give himself a chance until the cards fell his way. He made it to the final table still with the second-shortest stack, but finally, after chipping up a bit through a series of all-in shoves with the blinds escalating, the rungood manifested itself in more than just getting C-bets through.
Better to run good late than early
After flopping a flush to win a big pot from eventual 8th-place finisher William Meeks, Hobday had chips to do some damage, and do damage he did.
Hobday wiped out the entire murderer’s row of former WSOPC Playground Main Event champions and final tablists in quick succession, starting with April 2024 winner, Dustin Melanson in sixth place, April 2025 tenth-place finisher William Blais in fifth, and that event's third-place finisher Jorge Pacheco in third again.
Hobday had praise for all his opponents, but singled out Pacheco.
“I was happy that (Jorge) was on my right. I thought he was probably the best player on the table. Everybody was pretty solid. I was just picking spots and things were working out for me.”
Finally, with a nearly 6:1 chip lead versus runner-up Adrian Ottorino, Hobday completed his victory by flopping a set of deuces and leaving Ottorino drawing dead on the turn to finish their match in less than 15 minutes and claim the title.
Hobday’s triumph at Playground ties a big, bright, shiny bow on what’s been an incredible series at the GPI award-winning poker room with massive fields and huge prize pools throughout the 18-event Circuit series that will return in November.
Hobday says he wouldn’t miss the chance to come back to defend his title. “I’ll definitely be back. I would say no poker room really compares to it in Canada.”
You can watch his winning hand below.
