Saturday, August 6, 2016 1:00 AM Local Time
John Bailey Wins Opening Event at the WSOP Circuit at Harrah's Cherokee
Event #1
No Limit Hold'em
Buy-In: $300 (+$65)
Total Entries: 377
Prize Pool: $113,100
John Bailey Wins Opening Event at the WSOP Circuit at Harrah's Cherokee
Cherokee, North Carolina (August 4, 2016) – A self-proclaimed “boring, serious guy,” has proven tonight that he is anything but, after winning his first World Series of Poker Circuit ring.
Bailey was first introduced to poker ten years ago. He started out as a cash game player, mainly playing Omaha, but within the last four to five years has started playing mostly tournament poker. He works five days a week as a wholesaler/vendor, and describes himself as a “weekend warrior” saying, “When I play, I hit it hard. I focus on work during the week, but when I play, I hit it hard. This (win) may get me going a little more.”
Bailey recently went through a divorce, and has started to focus more on poker, viewing it as a dream to be a professional player, but realizing that he has a lot of hard work ahead of him.
John Bailey battled hard, coming into the final table of Event #1 - $365
No-Limit Hold’em, third in chips. It was an up and down battle
that resulted in a heads up match between Bailey and Michelle Poff. Going into the final table Bailey played a focused, selectively aggressive game. “I just really wanted to put my headphones on, because I felt like everyone was just goofing off. But they (the headphones) died. I just wanted to get to heads up.”
When it came down to heads up play against Melissa Poff, Bailey said “I wasn’t gonna raise a hand. I was gonna limp, play complete post flop with her because she was going to call every raise. I know we got it all in preflop in the end, but she opened so, it happened...,” Bailey trails off.
“I wasn’t even worried about the money, I just wanted to win. I just wanted the ring.”
“Very few times you are going to get in this spot. Especially only being able to play recreationally. I was going to take advantage of it,” Bailey said. And take advantage of it he did. While he originally only planned on playing a few more events this series, he I going to try to fit in a few more, now that he is leading the race for player of the series.
He may be a quiet, and somewhat unassuming, but tonight John Bailey proved that he is anything but “boring,” and that he is certainly a player to watch in this series going forward.
Full results from this event are available on WSOP.com.
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At the conclusion of this event, John Bailey now leads in the Casino Champion race. The player who accumulates the most overall points in the twelve gold ring tournaments at Harrah’s Cherokee earns the title of Casino Champion and receives an automatic entry into the $1 million 2017 WSOP Global Casino Championship. The winner of the Harrah’s Cherokee Main Event earns an automatic entry to the Global Casino Championship as well. All players who cash in ring events will receive points that apply to both the Casino Champion race and the season-long race to claim one of the 50 at-large Global Casino Championship bids awarded to the top point earners throughout the season. More information on the points system is available on WSOP.com.