Saturday, April 29, 2017 12:41 PM Local Time
Dennis Tsai Wins $365 One-Day Event
Local finance pro turns his last few big blinds into a gold ring and nearly $21k in cash
Dennis Tsai is the newest winner on the WSOP Circuit. Tsai took down the one-day $365 No-Limit Hold’em event, defeating a field of 291 entries to win the gold ring and the top prize of $20,950.
Tsai is a 30-year-old finance professional from the local area. “I just play poker on the side,” he said. “Mostly tournaments. I’ve had some luck in tournaments, so I sort of stick with it.”
After experiencing good success online, Tsai transitioned into a live tournament player, and he’s starting to accumulate some results in the brick-and-mortar realm, too. He finished as the runner-up in the very first WSOP Circuit event ever held at Horseshoe Baltimore in 2015 — “That was… nice… and very annoying,” he said — and he’s cashed in two of the three Main Events held at this property to date.
Tsai had to endure a bit of a rough start to his Event #2 run. “Today was crazy,” he said after the win. “I bought in three times, and I almost didn't buy-in the third time.” He did fire a third bullet, though, and it ended up being quite a profitable decision. Tsai doubled up just before dinner to claw back to average, then went on an after-dinner rush as the bubble approached.
Things started to unravel bit once the field crossed into the money, though. Tsai ran ace-king into pocket aces, had pocket kings cracked by pocket sevens, and ran ace-jack into ace-queen all within the span of a couple levels. That last loss knocked him all the way down to just five big blinds, but Tsai maneuvered his short stack with a deft hand.
“Shove, shove, shove,” he said. “Got some stacks back. Everything went well after that. After I had five bigs, it was all good,” he laughed. His fortunes turned around a bit at the final table, and he was able to win two huge pots to propel him toward the eventual victory.
In four-handed play, Tsai doubled up with pocket fours against pocket threes, and he found pocket aces against ace-eight to eliminate Brian Bailey in third place and take a big lead into the heads-up duel against Karlis Siljakovs III.
Siljakovs would not go quietly, though. He doubled back into contention on the first hand of the match and even worked his way into the chip lead at one point. Tsai battled back valiantly, though, and Siljakovs ended up bluffing off his stack with king-ten after Tsai flopped an ace with ace-ten suited. Tsai correctly snap-called a flop shove, and two blanks later, it was all over with Tsai holding the ring.
When asked what his plans are for the rest of the series, Tsai wasn’t quite ready to commit. “It was actually to-be-determined based on what happened today,” he said. “I have been running kinda like shit — er, crap — and it was kinda like, ‘Let’s just see how today goes.’”
The day went rather well, indeed, and Tsai is a big favorite to return for more ring and points hunting later in the week.