Mahmood Beats Schmejkal for the WSOP Heads-Up Title | IXGAMES

At the recent Heads-Up No-Limit Hold’em championship game at the World Series of Poker (WSOP), Bangladesh-born Ayaz Mahmood defeated Germany’s Ernst Schmejkal. Mahmood won a total of $625,674 in the $10,000 buy-in WSOP championship game for Heads-Up No-Limit Hold’em poker, along with the highly coveted WSOP championship bracelet. Ayaz Mahmood’s humble beginnings Ayaz Mahmood was a former retailer of furniture who is now a professional poker player based in Texas’ Sugarland suburb. At 38 years old, Mahmood is the first Bangladesh-born to ever win a WSOP bracelet within the World Series of Poker’s 41 years of history. According to Mahmood, he is a “pot-limit Omaha player” and that this is the first time that he has joined the $10,000 Heads-Up poker championship game. He also said that during the first few rounds, it seemed to him that he was doing a good job, and that all of the rounds were full of tough poker pros. He just did what he does best and was very successful at it. He also expressed that he was indeed happy because he was able to beat such a tough crowd. To earn the highly coveted gold WSOP championship bracelet, Mahmood had to win 9 straight matches that were held for more than four nights and days. The first match for the final game lasted for agrueling six hours and twenty minutes. This duel lasted for such a long period that all the players agreed to resume playing for the fourth day on an unscheduled date. Because of the duration, this match was the 3rd longest match for a heads-up finale in the history of the World Series of Poker. The final match was against Germany’s Ernst Schmejkal. Mahmood stated that Ernst Schmejkal was a very tough opponent to beat, and that it took him hours to finish Schmejkal off. Mahmood’s winning hand was a Broadway straight, defeating Schmejkal’s cards. However, despite losing the game to Mahmood, Schmejkal was able to take home a whopping $386,900 for the runner-up prize. More on Ernst Schmejkal Ernst Schmejkal originally came from Germany’s Gottingen but is now based in London. In college, he studied economics before becoming a full-pledged poker pro. Semi-finalists who were not able to reach the finale were Moscow, Russia’s Alexander Kostritsyn and Stony Brook, New York’s Jason Somerville. However, both of these players were able to take home a cash prize. Other players who were cut during the quarterfinals were Thang Pham, Faraz Jaka, Vanessa Rousso, and Ludovic Lacay.