He’s one of the most recognizable and successful tournament players on the East Coast, and after crushing everything in his sight to the tune of over 140 career tournament victories according to his extensive Hendon Mob profile (230+, he says, including unreported wins), Justin Arnwine may finally be adding WSOP gold to his vast trophy haul.
Arnwine, who has over $1.8M in career tournament earnings but just one six-figure score, a $260,000+ win in a $1,600 WPT Mystery Bounty event last December, will enter the final day of the World Series of Poker $1,500 6-Max No-Limit Hold 'em event second out of nine remaining players, behind only chip leader Michel Molenaar.
If Arnwine can complete his run to the bracelet through the field of 1,840 entries, he’ll claim a top prize of $346,108, more than ten times what he’s ever won in a WSOP tournament.
He’s already locked up $35,250, a best-ever result at the WSOP, but the vibrant tournament crusher, donned as always from head to toe in his trademark Hello Kitty gear, is ready for his WSOP breakthrough.
“It would be big, it would be big. It’s like one of the only things left… this would mean a lot. This would go down in my mind as better than the Mystery Bounty.”
Six max = sick competition
To get to this point, the Maryland native has had to navigate one of the toughest No-Limit Hold ‘em fields of the summer already, surviving the likes in the final four tables alone of Cherish Andrews (12th) Chris Hunichen (13th), Shundan Xiao (17th), and Lukas Hafner (21st).
But they won’t be there on Wednesday, and Arnwine will be.
“There was nobody here who you could just be like ‘okay, they have this obvious tell, or I know I can just get paid off, or I know I can always bluff them.’ Everybody was capable.”
The rest of the field may be drawing dead
Besides his undeniable talent and a very healthy chip stack, Arnwine also has a well-proven, nearly invincible factor behind him as well, baby rungood!
Arnwine and his wife, Caitlyn, a successful poker player in her own right, recently had their first child, Imani, just a couple of months ago.
Last year, John Racener missed most of the front-end of the series as he became a father for the third time, then, in his first tournament, just hours after arriving in Vegas, he won the $1,500 Super Turbo Bounty event.
Arnwine says he and his wife may have cracked the code behind the poker phenomenon.
“We think it’s psychological. If you want to be with your family really badly and if you want to be around the baby really badly, then you just take every spot. Because if you lose, it’s almost like a two-sided coin, because you’re like, ‘okay, now I get to go home to my family.’”
He continued, “My wife sent me a picture of her when I was on break, and I just texted back ‘motivation’. I simultaneously am very happy I’m here, yet I want to be there.”
Event #13: $1,500 6-Max No-Limit Hold ‘em end of Day 2 chip counts:
- Michel Molenaar – 11,380,000 (142 bb)
- Justin Arnwine – 11,135,000 (139 bb)
- Harlan Karnovsky – 5,230,000 (65 bb)
- Honghao Zhang – 3,960,000 (49 bb)
- Julien Duveau – 3,300,000 (41 bb)
- David Rees – 3,185,000 (39 bb)
- Rania Nasreddine – 2,950,000 (36 bb)
- Daniel Hill – 2,890,000 (36 bb)
- Thai Dinh – 1,970,000 (24 bb)
