French player Romain Locquet is making waves at this year’s World Series of Poker (WSOP). The man from Feignies, France, has recorded the two biggest tournament cashes of his career in the past few months: a 30th place finish in the €25K High Roller at EPT Monte Carlo, followed by a win at the Wynn last month in a $1,100 Turbo. Both scores were around the $50K mark.
His WSOP resume to date comprises three results — a final table in Europe in 2021, followed by two cashes in Las Vegas this summer, in the $1,500 Monster Stack and the $2,500 NLH Freezeout.
It’s fair to say Locquet’s record is a decent one but nothing extraordinary. But then, that could be said by so many former WSOP champions of the past. Every player needs the one big win to propel them to greatness, and so often the WSOP Main Event is the platform from which new stars take flight.
As the sun sets on the last of the Main Event’s Day 2s, Locquet finds himself at the very top of the chip counts, with literally thousands of players below him. Anyone checking the counts will know his name, as will many more following an extraordinary hand that played out on the WSOP live stream.
PokerOrg’s Mo Afdhal spoke with Locquet to find out more.
‘I was forced to call, to hunt the 9’
As detailed in our WSOP Hand of the Week, Locquet rocketed to public attention in a sequence of play that seemingly had it all: pocket aces, quads, massive chip swings, and one of poker’s big-name players.
Check the article above for the play-by-play, but here are the Cliff Notes: Day 1 of the Main Event, a live-streamed table, and Locquet had pocket nines. He ended up in a preflop raising war with high roller Jared Bleznick, who had pocket aces. It ended with a 6-bet from Blez, which Locquet called.
“It wasn’t anything special,” says Locquet. “To start, I thought he was bluffing. I found myself with a pair of nines, so I five-bet. Then finally when he six-bet, I was forced to call to hunt the nine.”
The hunt was successful, and then some. The flop came down 
, about as good as it could be for Locquet and his top set.
“When it arrived, it was quite hard to maintain myself emotionally inside,” Locquet explains, “but I did my best; he paid me out, it was cool.”
Cool indeed. The turn brought the 
giving Locquet unbeatable quads. The two players got their chips in the middle with Bleznick drawing stone dead. The river came and went, and so did a visibly stunned Bleznick, out on Day 1.
‘Play it like any other tournament’
It was a super aggressive line with a medium pair like nines, but that’s what Locquet is all about, and the level of prestige at the Main Event isn’t going to cause him to play any other way.
“I think you should be aggressive,” he says, “because this tournament can be a lot for some players. Certain players can be a bit too passive. I think you should play it like any other tournament.”
With recorded results going back to 2015, this would be the first in the WSOP Main Event, assuming Locquet is able to continue his winning ways. He also has experience playing online, but certainly not exclusively.
“I basically play as much live as I do online, so I’m used to it. It’s mostly quite similar; sometimes it’s a bit tricky counting the blinds, but it’s fairly routine.”
Is it ‘fairly routine’ to lead a field of close to 3,000 players, with a $10 million dollar payout at the end? For some, maybe. Either way, Locquet is far from phased by the situation.
“I’m just going to continue to play my game as if I was playing a cash game, like any other day, and we’ll see where that leads.”
