Blaz Zerjav Wins Maiden WSOP Bracelet in $25,000 6-Handed High Roller

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Jun 07, 2025 5 min read

The curtains have closed on Event #22: $25,000 6-Handed High Roller and young online superstar Blaz Zerjav has topped an illustrious field of 336 entries for his first World Series of Poker bracelet and the first-place prize of $1,734,717. Zerjav came from behind in an epic heads-up match with Chris Moorman to deny the Brit his third bracelet.

Dating back to 2019 when Zerjav made his first appearance at the WSOP in Las Vegas, this will undoubtedly go down as his largest career score and the only one in the seven-figure range. On top of that, the newly turned 28-year-old will be celebrating his birthday in style with some of his friends who cheered him on from the rail.

"We're gonna have some good wine tonight," Zerjav said with a smile in his post-match interview. "It was always a dream for me to win a bracelet, and now I can say a dream come true."

Zerjav entered the heads-up match with Moorman as a huge underdog and facing a steep mountain to climb to overcome one of the very best in the game. However, the deficit was quickly erased and Zerjav stayed calm and collected throughout it all. "It was a huge deficit, but I still had 30 bigs. In my head, I was just saying I'll take it hand by hand, and we'll see how it goes."

And it went very well from then on, as the Slovenian never relinquished the lead. Although he often plays on the virtual felt in the comfort of his own home, Zerjav mentioned that this event kind of had that comfort feeling to it. "It's a different type of game, but a lot of players here are in the online tournaments as well. So I'm used to playing against them and I kind of felt half at home."

Final Table Payouts

Day 3 Action

There were 15 players who returned for Day 3 under the lights at the Horseshoe Events Center with over $87,000 already locked up. David Peters was the first to hit the rail in the opening hands, with Galen Hall and Kristen Foxen to shortly follow.

Once the final two tables were assembled, Michael Macchia and Barak Wisbrod were next to make their way to the payout desk. On the heels of one of the craziest pots between Fabian Gumz and Moorman that saw a five-bet pot lead to Moorman taking the chip lead, the Austrian was next to hit the rail.

Mustapha Kanit was nursing the short stack for most of the early stages but his luck eventually ran out when his pair of sixes ran into the queens of Moorman. The unofficial final table didn't last long either when Moorman continued to build his lead with the elimination of Daniel Sepiol. Despite holding pocket kings, Sepiol was out-flopped by Moorman's pocket tens and was unable to recover.

The players took a 30-minute break to potentially cool off before the live stream on PokerGO began, however, that wasn't the case at all. In one of the very first hands at the feature table, Aram Oganyan and Zerjav got all of the chips in the middle in a classic flip. That flip went the way of Zerjav when he flopped four queens to leave Oganyan dead. Although he doubled his short stack a couple of times, Oganyan couldn't keep it going and fell off in sixth place.

Paulius Vaitiekunas entered the final table as one of the big stacks but got involved in a big hand with Jared Bleznick where Bleznick rivered the nut straight. Vaitiekunas took a big hit to his chip stack and then couldn't overcome the red-hot Moorman who flopped two pair to send the Lithuanian poker pro home in fifth place.

The final four players duked it out for over an hour with chips being passed all around the table. Throughout that time, the only thing that was stable was the chip lead of Moorman. The shorter stacks of Landon Tice and Bleznick clashed when they each picked up a strong ace. Unfortunately for Tice, he was in a dominated position and Bleznick ran out a flush to deny the young American his largest ever score.

It appeared that the final three players were in for a long grind with so many chips in play, however, the deck had something else to say. In a three-bet pot that was greatly inflated, Moorman turned the nut straight against Bleznick's pocket kings. All of the chips went in on the turn and Bleznick was left drawing dead in the biggest pot of the tournament. Moorman showed the first sign of any emotion as he took a huge lead into heads-up with Zerjav.

On the very first hand of heads-up action, each player was dealt a pocket pair and the chips got in. Zerjav held the better of the two pairs and the board changed none of that, earning him a double up to get back in the mix. Just moments later, another clash saw Moorman with pocket nines against Zerjav's ace-queen suited with 90% of all the chips in the middle preflop. An ace on the flop was all Zerjav needed to turn the tide and hold a massive lead of his own.

Moorman continued to fight for the next hour but was unable to gain any real momentum. It all came to a head when Moorman was down to just 10 big blinds and woke up with ace-jack. However, his opponent was waiting with a superior ace-king and the two-time bracelet winner was unable to find any help on the runout.

That wraps up the coverage for this event, but continue to follow along with PokerNews for all of the up-to-date news and live updates from around the 2025 World Series of Poker.

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• Tags Aram Oganyan Barak Wisbrod Blaz Zerjav Chris Moorman Daniel Sepiol David Peters Fabian Gumz Galen Hall Jared Bleznick Kristen Foxen Landon Tice Michael Macchia Mustapha Kanit Paulius Vaitiekunas WSOP World Series of Poker WSOP25
• Related Tournaments World Series of Poker
• Related Players Chris MoormanGalen HallDavid PetersMustapha KanitJared BleznickKristen Foxen