Rami Hammoud arrived in Las Vegas on June 18 with $20,000 for the World Series of Poker, but by early July, the Montreal native was down to his last $1,000.
"I was getting stomped," Hammoud told Craig Tapscott. "My confidence was low. I had zero intention of playing the Main Event."
Now, less than a month later, Hammoud has a seat for the final table of that WSOP Main Event, at least $1 million, and a potential date with $9 million more.
Hammoud's tune changed after a chance encounter in the casino hallway with a friend from back home.
"As chance would have it, I was walking through Paris [Casino], and I bumped into another Montreal player. I told him this is going horribly, and I'm done. I wanna go back home. I'm fed up."
Hammoud's friend pushed back. "You're not gonna play the Main? I'll buy a big piece of you, you just gotta play."
Last chance at romance
There was some back and forth, but Hammoud was convinced.
"I left that conversation feeling like, man, if he has the confidence in me to play, I should probably have some confidence."
He took the last $1,000 and jumped into a satellite.
"I had made up my mind I was going to play and just sell a big piece, but I ended up cashing the satellite, so I didn't have to do that."
Remi Hammoud Final Table Tale of the Tape
- Chips: 79,000,000 (2/9)
- Country: Canada
- Career earnings: $1,512,438
Make no mistake, this wasn't a poker pro firing his last $1,000 to try and pay the rent. Hammoud plays for fun.
"Poker is definitely more than a passion, but less than a profession."
Long ago, Hammoud took a shot at playing the game as a job, but it didn't last long.
"I remember thinking to myself, when the thing that you absolutely love to death becomes your work, all of a sudden it doesn't feel as exciting anymore. And the challenging part for me was that I had to continue going into work, which was poker, even though I was losing. I had no choice."
'I have a flight to catch'
Now, more than fifteen years later, Hammoud still loves the game, and he plays it on his terms.
Scoring a ticket to the WSOP Main Event on his last $1,000 may be just what he needed. In the past, before Hammoud started the Main, he was always profitable on his WSOP trip. This was the first time he was in the hole.
"It's important because the mindset now is completely different. I was ready to go home at any point in time."
Hammoud woke up every morning of the Main Event and checked out of his room. He dropped his luggage at the bell desk before heading to his seat, where he would spend the day before bagging up chips for the next one.
"I'd book my hotel when I finished my day. And the reason for this is that my mantra every single day was I have a flight to catch, so I am ready to die at any point in time."
Hammoud is not exaggerating at all.
"This carried with me all the way to the final table. I was ready to go at any time. I did not care. I genuinely did not care. I was ready to die. I was a bit more aggressive than perhaps other players. It was all connected. The perfect recipe for me to make it all the way till the end."
This is Hammoud's fourth shot at the Main. He's never cashed. He says he has never even had more than 100,000 chips. But previous versions of himself were completely different than this one.
"They all played as if this was the most important tournament ever. And those versions of Rami played just to try and survive as much as possible."
Rami Hammoud's day-by-day chip counts
- Day 1C - 62,000
- Day 2ABC - 281,000
- Day 3 - 697,000
- Day 4 - 1,490,000
- Day 5 - 2,630,000
- Day 6 - 17,400,000
- Day 7 - 41,500,000
- Day 8 - 79,000,000
Rami 5.0
It is going to be a lot more difficult to play this final table like any other tournament. Hammoud is running from one interview to the next, and he's constantly being reminded of what is at stake.
"It is going to be really, really hard to get back to that version of Rami."
Or not. Maybe this version of Hammoud was here the whole time, and it has nothing to do with being down for the series.
"In 2025, at the end of the World Series, I had made a decision that I'm no longer going to study for poker anymore. It's been over a year since I've opened the solver prior to the last two weeks because I have to get back into it. But in the last year, I just stopped opening solvers. I didn't want to study the game anymore."
The new goal was to maximize fun. Not maximize profit, which was the goal of the years past.
"I could be down, and still, if I can have fun, that'll be good. Unfortunately, I was down, and I didn't have fun. Sometimes those two overlap. That's why I have to remind myself, okay, for this Main Event, if you're gonna play it, have a good time doing it."
