Monday, November 27, 2017 1:52 AM Local Time
TJ Shulman Goes Wire to Wire to Win Re-entry
Florida pro turns a big chip lead into a second gold ring, $102,398 in cash
Late Sunday night, TJ Shulman added a second WSOP Circuit ring to his collection of poker trophies. Shulman won the opening $365 re-entry event at Harrah’s Cherokee, turning a big chip lead into a dominating victory and a six-figure score. He’s now claimed rings in back-to-back seasons after his win in Palm Beach a year ago.
Shulman, 50, is a professional poker player who makes his home in South Florida. He’s been around this game and others like it since he was a kid, learning the ropes from his late father.
“He played every Friday night in the game,” Shulman recalled. “I’d run around and get drinks for everybody for tips.”
The affinity for card games set him down the path of a full-time player, though he did move into the mainstream workforce for a while.
After college, Shulman became the director of operations for a large automobile chain, overseeing more than 50 dealerships. As the single parent of a young son, though, he realized an early retirement might be a possibility.
“When my son was three, I got tired of coming home at midnight,” Shulman said. “I just asked myself how much I needed. And I had my number.”
Shulman did retire, and now he gets to play the game full time and set his own schedule. As it has for the last 20 years, though, his calendar still revolves around his son. Brandon, 20, is a college hockey player, and Shulman prioritizes cheerleading over poker when the opportunity arises.
Last season, Papa Shulman just missed out on qualifying for the WSOP Global Casino Championship. He’d racked up 90 points but was unable to attend some of the spring stops while he followed his son’s progress on the ice.
“I won’t put myself in that position again,” he said.
This event was his first of the current season, and he’s already scored 50 points on the season-long leaderboard. He’ll be at Harrah’s Cherokee for the duration, too, where he’s taken an early lead in the race for Casino Champion.
His performance in the opener was an impressive one, building an enormous chip lead on a single Day 1D entry. He began Day 2 with nearly twice as many chips as the nearest challenger.
A big stack is no guarantee in poker, though, and even Shulman’s friends were betting against him. "I had three people at home with prop bets that I wouldn’t make the final table. You know, as good as you run to get there…,” he trailed off.
The regression never came on Day 2, though, and Shulman parlayed his towering stack into a big victory and a six-figure payday. In the moments after his win, he indicated the reasons for choosing this event over some of the competing ones running on the East Coast.
“Here is just better for me,” Shulman said. “It’s a different style. There’s no play in a lot of those tournaments. The WSOP structure is just so much better for me.”
This result, the second-largest of his career, moves him across the $750,000 mark in total earnings.
Final table results:
1st: TJ Shulman - $102,398
2nd: Thomas Larson - $63,632
3rd: Demetric Ferguson - $46,593
4th: James Giraldo - $35,993
5th: James Hill - $28,578
6th: Keith Henderson - $22,359
7th: Elanit Hasas - $17,536
8th: Zhengbin Lu - $13,779
9th: Omar Hafeez - $11,540
Click here for the full results.