After four days of poker, the $1,000 Ladies Championship will crown a winner today after a frenetic Day 3 at Horseshoe and Paris Las Vegas reduced the field to just seven finalists.
Always an event guaranteed to deliver compelling storylines (see PokerNewsreporter Gabby Barredo who captured a hand where a player pushed all-in with her husband's ashes yesterday), the WSOP's flagship female event has drawn 1,368 entrants this year with Japanese star Shiina Okamoto in pole position to win back to back titles and maintain her stranglehold on the event.
But also adding to the richness of the field this year was a touch of true Vegas royalty in the shape of September Sarno, the daughter of the man dubbed the 'First Emperor of Vegas'.
You may have heard of Jay Sarno; you may not have. But if you’ve ever been to Paradise, Las Vegas, you’ve seen and felt the legacy of a man whose vision raised the glass monoliths that now line the world-famous boulevard where the Horseshoe and Paris stands.
When Jay Sarno opened Caesars Palace on August 5, 1966, it changed the Las Vegas landscape forever. The opening ceremony cost $1 million (around $9.6 million in 2025) and featured two tons of filet mignon, 300 pounds of Maryland crabmeat, and 50,000 glasses of champagne.
"It's very exciting that my dad was a pioneer here in Vegas. He was considered the founder of the first theme resort," Sarno says. "Everything was basic before he started, and after him, all the hotels had themes. Steve Wynn was kind of like a protégé. When my dad opened Caesars in 1966, there wasn't another big opening until the Mirage 20 years later."
"When he first came, he saw nothing but mediocrity. He came here to build a better resort."
Sarno, who finished 110th to earn $2,182 in her second cash of the summer, added, "It was very exciting, very fun, but like most success stories, there was a fly in the ointment."
"Our father was a problem gambler and pretty much gambled his fortune away." Jay Sarno sold Caesars Palace just three years after its lavish opening ceremony in 1969.
Sent to boarding school at 17, September Sarno later left Las Vegas for Los Angeles, enrolling at the University of Southern California before building a highly successful career as a wealth manager.
"I wanted to know everything there was about money, and I built my own empire," she says. "That was the upside to watching what happened to my father."
Still, Sarno is reflective about his struggles. "If he were never a gambler, he wouldn't have come to Vegas to build a better class of casino. When he first came, he saw nothing but mediocrity. He came here to build a better resort."
Sarno is glowing as she talks about the fun she's having in this year's Ladies Championship.
"It's very fun. The women are fiercely competitive, and I'm playing with a lot of champions, people who have won bracelets," she tells PokerNews.
"I'm having lots of fun telling jokes at the table because I do a little stand-up comedy as a retirement hobby."
Despite her family links, Sarno wouldn't pick up the game of poker until much later in life, saying, "I wasn't attracted to poker until much later on. A few years ago, a boyfriend taught it to me, and I played a little online, and now I play a weekly home game with some poker sharks, and they got me good enough to play in these tournaments and cash."
And as for the idea of winning a gold WSOP bracelet? "I mean, when I heard there was jewellery involved, I said sign me up," she says, laughing.
Follow all the action from the last day of the $1,000 Ladies Championship, with hand-by-hand coverage on PokerNews.
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