To win a live WSOP tournament you need a good poker brain, a decent poker face and a little help from the poker gods.
Do you also need the gift of the gab?
Many top players love to indulge in a little ‘speech play’, but knowing just what to say to put an opponent on tilt or get a read is not a hard and fast requirement.
Just ask Yanting Jiang.
Her win in the $3K Mid-Stakes Championship on Monday came after overcoming a final table featuring 6 Americans, Britain’s Roberto Romanello, Vasileios Panagiotidis of Greece and Thailand’s Punnat Punsri.
English is not her first language, and any attempts to elicit info at the final table using Mandarin would have been futile.
So she let her poker do the talking. And in the end, she had the final word.
Silent but deadly
Jiang may have celebrated a birthday the day before this final table, but it can’t have been the type of birthday celebration Vegas is best known for. Far from being bleary eyed and hung over, Jiang was locked in and focused on securing by far the biggest win of her career.
And it’s a good thing too. This was a Championship event with 60-minute levels, 16 players to start the day and ended up more marathon than sprint.
It took just a few hours to get that 16 down to a final table, but then the pace slowed. Short stacks found the double, blinds went up. Rinse and repeat. It took almost six hours to lose the first from the final table.
By that point the blinds were biting, and once the first fell more would follow. They included two players well versed in winning — the Triton Tour’s high stakes regular Punnat Punsri and king of the WSOP Circuit Maurice Hawkins.
The wild card
A gambler might have a hard time looking past these two for a probable winner. At one stage Hawkins even battled back from a single small blind to get himself back in contention. Was the story writing itself?
Not this time. Neither of these two vastly experienced pros managed to reach the sharpest end of this tournament.
Punsri exited in 6th for $250K — his best return in what has been a disappointing WSOP for the GPI Player of the Year. Hawkins, who in contrast to Jiang had been maintaining a running commentary at the table for most of the day, went out in 4th for $432K, still chasing a first bracelet to add to a jewelry collection that includes 25 WSOP Circuit rings and (almost certainly) counting.
“You’re a wild card, a wild card at the table!” Hawkins exclaimed to Jiang as the battle raged.
In response, Jiang continued to let her play speak for her.
It worked. Florida-based Jiang is primarily a cash game player who has just a handful of tournament results to her name. But one of them now happens to be a WSOP gold bracelet win.
When she finally defeated Chahn Jung heads-up, the last opponent from a field of 3,668, Jiang claimed the $1,159,182 top prize and became the fourth woman to bag a title at this year’s WSOP alongside Kristen Foxen, Michelle Chin and Skye Chen.
A big talker she may not be — in English, at least — but when crunch time came Jiang certainly walked the walk.
$3,000 Mid-Stakes Championship — final table results
- Yanting Jiang: $1,159,182
- Chahn Jung: $772,580
- Yoon Choi: $576,099
- Maurice Hawkins: $432,875
- Dylan Lew: $327,767
- Punnat Punsri: $250,110
- Michael Rocco: $192,347
- Roberto Romanello: $149,093
- Vasileios Panagiotidis: $116,485
Images courtesy of the WSOP.
