Antonio Vargas has been on fairly the run not too long ago. The 4 largest scores of his poker match profession have all are available outright wins, and all since final August. The greatest of all was his most up-to-date. The Colorado native defeated a subject of two,148 entries within the $1,700 U.S. Circuit Championship no-limit maintain’em occasion on the 2026 World Series of Poker to earn $439,605 and his first gold bracelet.
This victory elevated Vargas’ lifetime haul to almost $1.6 million. Over $961,000 of that comes from his aforementioned slew of current triumphs. He began with a win on the 2025 MSPT Poker State Championship for $141,255 on Aug. 3. Roughly six weeks later, he took down the Colorado Summer Poker Championship for one more $73,090. Then, in December of 2025 he got here out on high in a $1,600 buy-in on the WPT World Championship pageant for $307,794.
This breakthrough win in Las Vegas got here with 1,080 Card Player Player of the Year factors for Vargas. This was his first POY-qualified rating of 2026, but it surely alone was ample to maneuver him inside the highest 300 within the total standings offered by CoinPoker.
“The people that know, know that it means a lot to me,” Vargas advised PokerInformation stay reporters protecting the occasion. “It just means everything to me right now.”
The sizable turnout for this occasion inside Horseshoe and Paris Las Vegas made for a $3,231,666 prize pool, with 324 gamers incomes a share. Notables who ran deep included Angela Jordison (fiftieth), Lexy Gavin-Mather (twenty third), Robert Kuhn (fifteenth), Pei Li (14th), Shawn Daniels (seventh), and Kartik Ved (third). This was Ved’s second third-place displaying of the pageant. The bracelet winner from India cashed for $211,817 simply days after putting third within the Mini Mystery Millions for $200,000. He now has over $2.4 million in recorded scores.
Final Table Results
| Place | Player | Payout | POY Points |
| 1 | Antonio Vargas | $439,605 | 1,080 |
| 2 | Kai Cohen | $292,916 | 900 |
| 3 | Kartik Ved | $211,817 | 720 |
| 4 | Michael Plesa | $154,853 | 540 |
| 5 | Liubomyr Melnyk | $114,465 | 450 |
| 6 | Malcolm Franchi | $85,561 | 360 |
| 7 | Shawn Daniels | $64,681 | 270 |
| 8 | Scott Horvath | $49,459 | 180 |
| 9 | Yannick Capocetti | $38,258 | 90 |
Photo credit: WSOP / Tyler Abrams.
