This week at the WSOP Circuit series at Playground, Ruoxiao Shi won the $300 Colossus event for his first WSOP Circuit ring and $80,000, topping a field of 2,992 entries. As impressive as besting a field of that size was, he nearly did it the year before too, finishing third in the 2024 edition out of 2,402 entries.
It’s an incredible feat for Shi to make crazy deep runs in field sizes that big, let alone final table both, winning one of them. The run is the latest big performance at Playground this week, where Min Qiu picked up $38K on a 24-hour heater.
It got us thinking about other great feats of repeat brilliance in an event.
With all due respect to players who have made back-to-back runs in immediate events, including the likes of the man who earned it as a nickname, Layne ‘Back-to-Back’ Flack, and WSOP Circuit stars who’ve won Circuit Main Events back-to-back like Maurice Hawkins and Michael Persky, the criteria for this discussion are specific: Repeat winners or great runs in the same WSOP event.
Also, shoutout to the likes of multi-time Poker Players Champions Michael Mizrachi and Brian Rast, Main Event champ Joe Cada, and others who have won or made deep runs in events multiple times, but not in succession.
We had to make it specific, or else this would be a crazy long article.
So, shout out to Mizrachi, Rast, Cada, Flack, Hawkins, Persky, Scott Stewart, Anthony Zinno, Mike Leah, and others who have taken down tournaments in quick succession or won multiple titles in the same event. Your accomplishments are incredibly impressive, but this list requires those specific qualifications; we need you to have done it in the same event in the following year.
WSOP Main Event repeat champions
The WSOP Main Event remains the marquee event of the yearly tournament schedule, and it’s where most will look to gauge the greatest performances in poker, so we’ll start there for our look at great repeat performances.
In the 'old school' category, the founders who began building the Main Event’s legacy are the first to look at. The great Doyle Brunson went back-to-back in 1976-77 in the early days with small field sizes and Stu Ungar conquered consecutive years as the player pool began to grow in the early 1980s. Finally, Johnny Chan was likely to be the last repeat Main Event champion in 1987-88.
The post-Moneymaker era
Several players in the modern era have come close, but no one has gone back-to-back. There have been several impressive year-on-year performances, though.
The closest to pulling off the feat was 2004 champion Greg Raymer, whose victory over a field of 2,576 was followed by a run to 25th place the following year in a field of 5,619 as Main Event attendance expanded massively.
That 2004 Main Event also saw an impressive repeat performance as Dan Harrington, who had finished third in Moneymaker’s 2003 Main Event, followed that up with a fourth-place finish in Raymer’s year.
It would be debated which of those back-to-back Main Event performances was the most impressive for years until a new contender entered the fray in 2013-14.
Famously claiming he “wasn’t f***ing finishing ninth again” after making the Main Event final table for a second consecutive year, Mark Newhouse did just that. While Newhouse was disappointed to not improve on his Main Event result from the previous year, the fact that he reached the final table in back-to-back years with fields of 6,352 and 6,683 is still one of poker’s most impressive accomplishments.
The most recent to make a comparable pair of Main Event runs was Michael Ruane in 2016 and ’17 as after finishing fourth out of 6,737, he bubbled the final table the following year, finishing 10th out of 7,221.
Mixed-game masters
While the Main Event is the Main Event, the tournament affectionately known as the mixed games Main Event, the Poker Players Championship, has seen what many consider to be some of the greatest accomplishments in poker.
While Mizrachi and Rast have won the prestigious title three times each, the only player to successfully defend their title is Dan “Jungleman” Cates, who topped a 63-player field in 2021, then did it again against a much larger field of 112 in 2022.
Among the mixed game community, the debate over which of those performances is the greatest is matched or surpassed by just one other feat, Adam Friedman’s three-peat in the $10,000 Dealer’s Choice Event in 2018, ‘19, and ’21 (no WSOP in 2020 due to pandemic).
Okamoto on deck in WSOP Ladies' event
The WSOP Ladies championship has also seen an incredible repeat performance recently, as after Shiina Okamoto’s 2023 ended with a runner-up finish out of 1,295 entries, she came back last year and won it, besting 1,245 entries in the process.
Okamoto will almost certainly be back this summer, so could the Japanese star successfully defend her title and add to her already impressive WSOP story?
Meanwhile, the Super Seniors event may not be the first place you think of for great repeat performances in WSOP history, but it certainly has one.
In 2016 and ’17, James Moore won and then successfully defended his title in the 60+ event.
Moore’s triumphs were over fields of 1,476 and 1,720 entries, respectively, making his repeat wins over the largest fields of any back-to-back champion in WSOP history.
And finally, John Smith’s runs to runner-up finishes in the 2016 and ’17 $10,000 Heads-up championships are certainly worth a mention as well. The then 70-year-old veteran and Purple Heart recipient’s unorthodox style left his opponents flummoxed each year, with only Alan Percal and Adrian Mateos able to finally end his runs at the final hurdle.
Can I get an encore?
Back here at Playground, James Pillon is currently on his quest to repeat as Main Event champion, with a chip stack at the start of Day 2. Last fall, he topped a field of 1,503 entries to claim the $333,420 first prize for his largest career tournament score.
Repeating as a WSOP Circuit Main Event champion would be a rare feat indeed, but after seeing someone essentially go back-to-back earlier in the series, who’s to say Pillon can’t make another run of their own in the Main Event?
Playground has provided many great moments for poker players in Montreal and surrounding areas in its 15 years of operation, and the WSOP Circuit series here has certainly provided another one and given us plenty of food for thought about other great WSOP accomplishments.
