Ema Zajmović

Ema Zajmović (born 7 April 1990) is a Bosnian-Canadian professional poker player. In 2017, she became the first and only woman to win an open World Poker Tour (WPT) Main Event.

Early life and education

Born to Bosnian parents in 1990, Zajmović grew up in war-torn Bosnia. Her family moved to Quebec City, Quebec, after the war in 1996. 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. 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.

Career

Zajmović, who took up poker at age 19, has primarily played cash games instead of live tournaments. She won her first tournament prize money in August 2011 at a European Poker Tour (EPT) side event in Barcelona. In July 2016, she made her debut at the World Series of Poker (WSOP) in Las Vegas, finishing 929th for a cash prize of . 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".

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 and a wrestling-style belt. 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 hit two pair. 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, (Zajmović was the second woman to win a WPT Main Event in general, following Van Nguyen at the WPT Celebrity Invitational in 2008.)

Zajmović narrowly lost two WPT Main Tour events the next year. She made her third Main Event final table in April 2018 in Amsterdam, where she finished in second place for just over . In November 2018, she returned to WPT Montreal for her biggest payout to date: Though she got beat by a heads-up hero call, she received for second place.

One of the most prominent female players on the professional poker tour, Zajmović has spoken of the difficulty early in her career of "being a girl in a man's world". She has appeared on shows such as Live at the Bike and Poker After Dark. With over in live tournament winnings , she is the 38th-most successful female poker player of all time. Additionally, she is the second-most successful Bosnian poker player of all time (after Ali Imsirovic).