Since we last saw Justin Saliba at a World Poker Tour event, he’s been on a tear – earning $949,525 since taking third place in a $25,000 high roller event at the WPT World Championship in December.
In the most literal sense, Saliba has been around the world and back since then. He traveled more than 26,000 miles going from Las Vegas to Fort Lauderdale, back to Las Vegas, on to Paris for an EPT, then to Taipei City for an APT event, then hopping over to Jeju for a Triton series, back to Las Vegas for the PokerGO Studio and finally back around to the Seminole Hard Rock.
He racked up 13 cashes with an average buy-in of $23,769 and earned a little better than $36.25 per mile traveled. “I’m getting a lot of miles in,” Saliba laughed. “I really enjoy traveling to all the great stops and Fort Lauderdale is hard to miss when the WPT is here.”
Saliba’s lean frame doesn’t squeeze easily in most plane seats as he’s north of 6’4” and his flyer miles are starting bump him up to first class. “I want to play the biggest, high-stakes tournaments that run across the world,” he said. “I’m in a spot in life where I’m happy to travel around and battle with the best players. Wherever they’re running high stakes tournaments, I want to be there.”
Battling the best players in the world is one thing but dominating them is an entirely different matter. In under three years of playing live tournaments seriously, Saliba racked up 44 final table finishes.
“I’m not sure what I’m doing differently,” said Saliba. “I really enjoy my process and want to play my game. I love playing poker, studying poker, putting in volume and traveling for the game. I’m in a really good headspace when it comes to traveling for tournaments at the moment. I really want to win; I really want to make final tables.”
“I care a lot and want to do well,” he added. ““I try to measure my process. I want to make sure I’m not getting too high when things are going well and not getting too low when things are going poorly. I try to stick to my day-to-day (routine) of improving every day. I want to be the hardest worker in every tournament I play.”
From online crusher to the live arena
Saliba cut his teeth by playing mostly online six-max cash games. He enjoyed the solitude of playing online but when Covid hit and the online tables started filling back up he felt the need to get away.
“I moved over to online tournaments and right when things opened back up, I really wanted to take a shot at live poker,” said Saliba. He’s not afraid to jump in the deep end; his first international tournament was EPT Monte Carlo.
Instead of throttling down to rest before the summer, Saliba is gearing up to keep battling the best. “I’m going to go to Monte Negro for the next Triton event, which I’m very excited about, and then Las Vegas for the summer,” he said. I don’t like to lock myself in too much to a set schedule. I want to make sure I’m enjoying to play and in the mood to play.”
“I don’t want to force it,” Saliba added. “I know other players who get burned out easily and I don’t think that’s going to happen to me. I want to manage my expectations with my play.”
Getting outside is something Saliba tries to do during each stop and he picked up the expensive hobby of golf. “I try to golf as much as possible. I haven’t been the best about staying active the last couple of years.”
Saliba isn’t results-oriented and doesn’t like declaring hard goals but we pressed him anyways to see if he would set a goal to cash for a little over $50,000 to make it a cool milly for a trip around the world.
Saliba replied with a fitting, “I hope so.”
All photos courtesy of WPT. Feature photo by Joe Giron.
