Brad Owen is eight years and more than 300 episodes into his journey as a poker vlogger. He’s become one of poker’s biggest stars in that stretch, beloved by many in the poker community.
Owen introduced the latest edition of the vlog to his base of 763,000 subscribers on Monday, and he says it’s one of his favorite episodes he’s ever produced.
Episode #323 is titled “I Make QUAD ACES!!! BIGGEST Bounty Of My Life! Turning $0 into $10,000+!” and features Owen’s adventures at the ClubWPT Gold $5 Million Freeroll at Wynn Las Vegas in December.
Navigating a $5 million freeroll and a heckler
The ClubWPT Gold $5 Million Freeroll played out during the 2024 WPT World Championship. The invite-only tournament brought together a field of players who qualified for entries via various contests put forth by ClubWPT. Owen, a brand ambassador for the World Poker Tour, gave away around 150 Golden Passports for the event.
As advertised, Owen does indeed make quad aces in the first hand of the vlog. He takes a beat shortly thereafter, however, that puts him down to less than two big blinds.
In the next few minutes of the episode, Owen spins that dire stack back into contention. Along the way, the viewership gets an account of several conversations where a heckler at the table takes a few shots at Owen.
The poker world hasn’t really ever seen Owen lose his cool, and he doesn’t even really do that here. He does stand up for himself, however, with media filming the hand and with his own camera running at the time (the hand begins at the 12:15 mark in the episode).
The heckler (named Robert) eventually apologized.
Owen goes on to make a pretty deep run in the $5 Million Freeroll, where he pulls the biggest bounty of his life.
Sweating Kevin Calenzo
After busting out of the $5 Million freeroll, Owen sticks around to sweat his friend Kevin Calenzo, who’s in the midst of a potential final table run in the WPT Prime Championship. Calenzo eliminates the 11th-place and 10-place finishers, sending the tournament home for the night and clinching his spot among the final nine.
Calenzo goes into final table play as the chip leader, with $1.1 million on the line for first place. Owen skips his plans to play in a $10K event at the series that day and takes a spot on the final table rail.
Between his own results in the $5 Million Freeroll and Calenzo’s deep finish in the Prime Championship, Owen calls the experience documented in Episode #323 as one of the highlights of his career.
“It was one of the most fun days of poker, or fun few days of poker, that I’ve ever had,” Owen says to close the episode. “It was nice to win five figures on a freeroll, on a zero-dollar investment. And then to watch my buddy win over half a million dollars was just something that’s awesome. It’s really cool to be able to celebrate friends’ wins in poker.”
Image courtesy of World Poker Tour/Enrique Ivan Malfavon
