With thirteen players left in Event #17 of the 2025 World Series of Poker, the WSOP’s own account posted the chip counts: Dusti Smith on top, with 9,155,000 and 91 big blinds. The $2,000 No-Limit Hold’em had drawn 1,692 entries, and when it came down to two players, Smith was one of them, facing Scott Bohlman.
The match did not end on schedule. Bohlman and Smith had to come back for an unscheduled fourth day to finish it, and the last hand came with Smith moving all in from the button with Q-4 of spades. Bohlman called with pocket sixes. The flop of A-2-5 gave her extra outs to a wheel, but no three and no queen arrived. Bohlman, a mixed-game regular, won his second bracelet and his first in no-limit hold’em, for $436,044. Smith took $290,588, the largest score of her career.
The last hand, in numbers
The final hand is a useful one to work through if you play tournaments. A button shove with Q-4 suited is a standard play heads-up with a short stack, because heads-up ranges are wide and the hand has some equity against almost anything. Against pocket sixes, though, it is a clear underdog: one overcard, one undercard, and a suit that was partly blocked, since Bohlman held the six of spades. Before the flop, Smith had a little under a one-in-three chance.
The A-2-5 flop looked like it helped, and in one way it did. Any three now made her a wheel, the five-high straight, and any queen still gave her the better pair. That is seven outs with two cards to come from 45 unseen, and once the few runouts that still lose are counted, her chance comes to about 27 percent. The flop that looked like help had actually cost her a few points of equity, mostly because a flop with no spades on it ended her chances of a flush. Neither a three nor a queen came. (For where a wheel sits among the hands, see the complete poker hand rankings.)
What she did next is the reason her name traveled.
Across the Strip to the Wynn
Within days, Smith was in the $3,000 Ladies High Roller at the Wynn Summer Classic, the Wynn’s long-running summer series that runs alongside the WSOP every year. The event played over June 6 and 7, 2025, and drew 76 entries for a prize pool of $206,720, a large number for a women-only tournament at that price.
It was not a soft field. The Day 2 lineup included Maria Lampropulos, the Argentine who won the 2017 PokerStars Championship Bahamas main event, along with Victoria Livschitz, Sinead Davenport and Xuan Liu, who had recently become the first woman to win a Triton Poker Series title, in Montenegro. Smith started Day 2 as the chip leader and finished it with the trophy, beating Singapore’s Xinyi Hong heads-up. First place paid $61,335; Hong took $38,243.
Two deep runs in two different series in the same week is rare for any player. For someone who had just played four days to finish second in a bracelet event, the stamina alone was notable. If you have ever played a two-day tournament, you know how flat the second morning can feel; Smith did it twice in a row.
The Dallas player and her record
Smith is based in Dallas, Texas. Her record before 2025 shows a steady, busy tournament player rather than a sudden arrival. Card Player’s database counts around 150 recorded cashes and five tournament wins as of 2026, with total recorded earnings of about $1.3 million. Roughly $470,000 of that came from 36 cashes at the WSOP.
Her largest results, set out by year, give a sense of the schedule she plays:
Swipe the table
| Year | Event | Finish | Prize |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | WPT World Championship $1,100 Ladies | 3rd | $51,538 |
| 2024 | Leap Into Spring Series $1,100 NLH | 3rd | $120,000 |
| 2025 | WSOP Event #17, $2,000 NLH | 2nd | $290,588 |
| 2025 | Wynn Summer Classic $3,000 Ladies High Roller | 1st | $61,335 |
The 2022 result came at the first WPT World Championship festival held at the Wynn, the event that moved the WPT’s season-ending championship to Las Vegas with a $10,400 main event. The $1,100 Ladies was one of the side events on that schedule.
Texas players have an unusual path into the game. Card rooms in the state run on membership and seat fees, with no casino rake, and rooms such as The Lodge in Round Rock and the clubs in the Dallas and Houston areas have produced a generation of regulars who travel to Las Vegas for the summer series. Brad Owen, one of The Lodge’s co-owners, is a well-known example from the content side of that scene.
Ladies events and open fields
Smith’s two June results came in two kinds of event, and both matter. The WSOP runner-up finish came in an open field, where women typically make up a small share of entries. The Wynn title came in a women-only event, which has its own debate: some players see ladies tournaments as a way to bring more women into the game, others would prefer the attention to go to open events.
The size of the 2025 Wynn field gives one side of that debate a point. Seventy-six women paying $3,000 each is a strong turnout, and the lineup was made up largely of players with serious open-field records, Smith included. For the social reasons people show up to live poker in the first place, see the social aspect of poker.
Mid-2026
Smith has kept a full schedule since. Card Player’s 2026 Player of the Year standings list her with about $69,000 in points-eligible winnings for the year as of mid-2026, a quieter season than the one before. The 2025 numbers remain the high point: $290,588 at the Horseshoe and Paris, $61,335 at the Wynn, and an unscheduled Day 4 heads-up match decided by a pair of sixes.