It took three hands of heads-up play for Mike Holtz to close out his second career WSOP bracelet — and the player sitting across from him at the end was Malaysia’s Mei Seow, who turned a deep run in Event #31: $1,500 Super Turbo Bounty into a $158,641 payday and the standout APAC result of the day in Las Vegas.
Holtz topped a field of 2,103 entries at Horseshoe and Paris for $238,097 and, more importantly to him, his first live piece of WSOP gold after previously winning an online bracelet in 2024. “I feel very vindicated. I feel like I won something on the big stage,” he said afterward, before delivering the line that has already followed him around the Horseshoe: “Daddy’s got 2 now.”
Three hands, one bracelet
The Super Turbo Bounty does not reward patience. With 319 players left and the money looming, the bubble burst almost instantly as seven players hit the rail at once. From there the field collapsed at the speed the format demands. Holtz carried a chip lead into the final table after turning a full house against Dustin Harrelson’s pocket jacks, then weathered a wild three-handed stretch against the relentless Rute Jin, doubling with pocket aces at one point when Jin jammed a turn with only a draw.
Seow was very much part of that endgame, chipping up through Jin at a key moment to stay in contention. But after Holtz eliminated Jin in third to take a better-than-5:1 lead, the heads-up match was a formality. Seow moved in with six-five suited, Holtz snap-called with ace-three, and the board ran clean.
A quiet milestone for Malaysian poker
Second place in a 2,000-plus runner bracelet event rarely makes headlines outside the winner’s circle, yet Seow’s deep run is the kind of result that keeps stacking up for Southeast Asian players on the felt at the modern WSOP. Malaysia has been a steady presence in Las Vegas this summer, and a six-figure score against that depth of field is no fluke.
The bounty format also gave the final table a notably international flavor — Peru’s Carlos Chu went out fourth, and the UK’s Zhicheng Miao rounded out the nine-handed finale — a reminder that the bracelet races in 2026 are being decided by a genuinely global cast.
With dozens of bracelets still left to be handed out before the Main Event, there will be more names from the region in contention soon enough. We’ll keep tracking the APAC runners as the series rolls on.