She made her third Main Event final table in April 2018 in Amsterdam, where she finished in second place for just over €100,000. Zajmović narrowly lost two WPT Main Tour events the next year.

This victory, on 15 February 2017, marked the first time in WPT's 15-year history that a woman had won a Main Tour open buy-in event, an achievement that was recognized with the Moment of the Year Award at the 2017 American Poker Awards. She entered the final day as the chip leader she retook the lead multiple times as she knocked out the last four players, clinching the tournament when her K ♠ Q ♠ hit two pair. Returning to Kahnawake for WPT Playground two months later, Zajmović made her second straight final table and this time came out on top, placing first out of 380 entrants for CA$241,500 and a wrestling-style belt. Tournament winner Mike Sexton spoke highly of Zajmović's aggressive play up to her exit, saying she 'dominated that tournament like nobody I've ever seen'. In November 2016, at WPT Montreal (held at the Playground Poker Club in Kahnawake), she reached her first WPT Main Tour final table, but bluffed away her chip lead to finish in fifth place for just over CA$100,000. In July 2016, she made her debut at the World Series of Poker (WSOP) in Las Vegas, finishing 929th for a cash prize of US$15,000. She won her first tournament prize money in August 2011 at a European Poker Tour (EPT) side event in Barcelona. Zajmović, who took up poker at age 19, has primarily played cash games instead of live tournaments.

She worked for Justin Trudeau's first election campaign in 2015 and, after moving to Montreal, worked part-time for a public relations company as her poker career progressed. An introvert and a good student when she was young, she originally wanted to become a lawyer, but at Université Laval in Quebec she studied public relations and earned a master's degree in political communication. Her family moved to Quebec City, Quebec, after the war in 1996. In 2017, she became the first and only woman to win an open World Poker Tour (WPT) Main Event.īorn to Bosnian parents in 1990, Zajmović grew up in war-torn Yugoslavia. Information accurate as of 25 April 2023.Įma Zajmović (born 7 April 1990) is a Bosnian-Canadian professional poker player. Saint-Augustin-de-Desmaures, Quebec, Canadaīosnia and Herzegovina (then part of SFR Yugoslavia)

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