Saturday, May 20, 2017 5:35 PM Local Time
Brandon Fish Wins Fifth Gold Ring in NOLA
Nebraska pro becomes the newest addition to the Circuit’s five-time club
There’s been a recent trend of players winning their fifth Circuit title — Roland Israelashvili and Caufman Talley have both done it during the past month — and Brandon Fish has just become the newest addition to that list.
Fish defeated a field of 370 entries in a $365 no-limit hold’em event at Harrah’s New Orleans, winning his fifth gold ring and $24,414 in cash. He also collected 50 points in the race for Casino Champion at this venue and in the season-long race for seats in the Global Casino Championship.
Fish is a 31-year-old professional poker player from Kearney, Nebraska, a small town along I-80 in the middle of the state. A familiar face on the WSOP Circuit, he’s earned nearly $300,000 on the traveling tour, including those five wins.
The breakthrough came in Atlantic City in 2012, where Fish won the big re-entry event for his first gold ring and a career-best score of more than $50,000. It took more than two years to find another win, but the frequency of victory has been increasing a bit, of late. Fish went on to add a third ring early in 2016, then two more to start 2017 to bring him to five total and into some elite company on the Circuit’s all-time leaderboard.
This win may have been the toughest yet for Fish, though. At the end of a 16-hour day of poker, he found himself heads-up against three-time Circuit winner Marshall White, who’s running as hot as anyone on tour right now. White was fresh off a win in the $580 event just one night prior, and it looked like he was well on his way to another ring as he began the duel with about a 4:1 lead over Fish.
Fish battled valiantly, though, won a flip or two and a 60/40 from the wrong end, and he was soon the one with a hammerlock on the title.
On the final hand of the match, White committed his last couple big blinds with a middling queen-three suited, and Fish woke up with pocket kings to earn himself a new set of winners’ photos.