But then, she headed back home to Montreal, Quebec, where-so it turns out-there were much bigger fish to be fried. It wasn’t until 2016 that she began carving her name into the poker world. Zajmovic collected $15,000 for a 929 th place finish in the 2016 WSOP Main Event-little more than the $10k buy-in and expenses to enter. That earned her three small cashes between 20. She started out small time, just playing for fun in cash games. Bicknell spent many more years earning her stripes, both live and online. Ema was still in grade school, knew nothing of poker, while Kristen was busy crushing her foes, playing more than 2.5 million hands online in 2006. Yet, in just two short years, Ema’s pocketed well over half a million dollars in live events all over the world. That’s saying a lot, since young Ema has much less hands-on experience. Ema Zajmovic Shoots for the StarsĮma shows as much promise as fellow Canadian Kristen Bicknell. She is a world traveler, professional rounder, and fierce grinder of the felt. She is one of the few Canadians-and even fewer women-to make it to Day 5 of the 2018 WSOP Championship. She is the first woman to ever claim an open-entry WPT Main Event title. One who experienced more trials and tribulations in her youth than most experience in a lifetime, and at just 28 years of age, has earned more money playing major live poker events than some of us see in a decade. Who is this beautiful brunette with the steely-eyed gaze and deceptively cunning smile? She’s one of Canada’s most recently beloved poker players. She hopes to use her raised profile in the game to help women, particularly with the pressures caused by living lives under the scrutiny of social media.“ Aggressive …not afraid to play pots,” a winner whose success has been “ no fluke.” Those were the descriptive words from the mouth of WSOP bracelet winner, WPT titlist and Poker Hall of Famer Mike Sexton when referring to one of today’s biggest and brightest rising stars of the poker world. These three final tables, along with her seven other cashes (as at June 2017) put her over $337,611 in live tournament winnings. It was amazing,” she said.Īfter she followed that up in April 2016 with a 4th place finish in the £2,500 6-max event at Dusk Till Dawn in Nottingham demonstrating that she is no fluke on the scene. The funniest and nicest part of this experience was all the women who came and were so supportive of me. “Honestly, I am really happy that I proved women can do it. She's aggressive and not afraid to play pots.”Ī few months later she became the first female winner of an open WPT main event, beating out 380 players to win first prize in the CA$3,200 Main Event at the WPT Playground, Kahnawake in February 2017. “When I won in Montreal, she dominated play from four tables down to the final table. The event was finally won by Mike Sexton, who describes himself as “probably Ema's biggest fan.” “She can really play,” Sexton said. Her real breakthrough though came in November 2016 when she took 5th at the WPT event in Montreal. In 2012 she had her first cash in a large event taking home 8th in an EPT €2,000 bounty event. Instead she put her qualification in public relations into a career in political communications, which culminated in her helping to run Justin Trudeau’s winning campaign for Canadian Prime Minister in 2015.Īlong the way she also picked up a deck of cards and a couple of CA$ over the baize, learning to play poker and making a splash. Claiming she was “not a cool kid at all,” she loved school and went on to study public relations at university with the intention of becoming a lawyer. In Canada Zajmovic learned French and English putting real effort into her studies. They left, fleeing the conflict which led to the creation of Bosnia and Croatia in the aftermath of the Iron Curtain’s final fall. Born in 1990, Ema Zajmovic found herself whisked away by her parents from Yugoslavia to Canada at the age of six.
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