The 2016 November Niner breaks through for first WSOP victory and $48,300 with victory in $2,200 High Roller
Coconut Creek, FL (21 September 2018) - Jerry Wong made a name for himself by making the 2016 November Nine. He finished eighth, earned just over $1.1 million and quickly became a household name in the poker world.
Since then, he hasn’t slowed down. Making a final table in the 2017 World Series of Poker and three of them in 2018, all in $10,000 buy-in events. The only thing that alluded his impressive WSOP resume was a victory.
That changed on Friday night at Seminole Casino Coconut Creek. Wong, a local from Coconut Creek, FL, defeated a 69-entry field in the $2,200 no-limit hold’em high roller.
“I’m just pretty happy to win. I would’ve quit if I lost heads-up,” joked Wong.
Wong defeated Mack Ham heads-up for the title, but his words were not meant to be insulting to Ham, who took home $29,848 for his runner-up finish. Wong steamrolled the final table and had more than half of the chips in play with just five players remaining.
When he got down to heads-up play, Wong had amassed a stack of about 1.7 million chips of the 2 million in play. At one point, Ham was down below 100,000 and Wong held a 19-to-1 chip lead.
It wasn’t an easy final table by any means with a couple of tough players battling it out. 2015 WSOP Main Event runner-up Josh Beckley finished fourth, seasoned pro Chad Eveslage finished third and three-time ring winner Peter Vitantonio finished in sixth.
Thanks to a favorable table draw, Wong was able to take advantage of a few spots that arose at the final table as they played into the money, with the final seven earning a payday.
“The table draw was pretty good,” said Wong. “I had the tougher players to my right and the weaker players on my left, so I was able to run them over a little bit.”
This is coming on the heels of one of the best summers you never heard about. At the 2018 World Series of Poker, Wong cashed five times and made three final tables, all in different variants of the game.
He cashed in the $1,500 Omaha hi-lo and the $2,500 mixed big bet before final tabling the $10,000 pot-limit Omaha eight-handed championship, the $10,000 razz championship and the $10,000 seven-card stud hi-lo championship.
His biggest cash was the pot-limit Omaha cash, where he finished fourth for $303,491. Over the course of the entire summer, he cashed for $441,742.
His latest victory wasn’t worth anywhere near the money he’s used to playing for, but it gets the monkey off of his back and puts some WSOP jewelry in his trophy case.
Here is a look at the results:
1st: Jerry Wong - $48,300
2nd: Mack Ham - $29,848
3rd: Chad Eveslage - $19,791
4th: Josh Beckley - $14,010
5th: Jeffrey Morzella - $10,547
6th: Peter Vitantonio - $8,414
7th: Hassan Tahsildar - $7,090
Relive the action with the live updates