The vibe at PokerGO Studio was a bit different than normal for Brandon Wilson as he walked in for the PGT Championship today.
The high-roller tournament grinder knows the space as well as anybody, having played here for six straight days in the lead-up to the PGT Championship. He qualified for the event by finishing in the top three in the PGT Last Chance Series leaderboard, which appropriately awarded the final three seats into this weekend’s $1 million prize pool freeroll.
Wilson won two of the six events in that series, adding nearly $600,000 in tournament earnings to his already impressive career resume. After getting through the Last Chance Series grind with great results, Wilson surveyed the scene at the PGT Championship before sitting down with PokerOrg just before play began.
“It’s pretty exciting, “ Wilson said. “I just walked in, and the vibe is palpably different.”
“I’ve played here for seven days straight, and this almost feels like a homecoming of sorts. It’s like special decorations and it’s a really cool vibe. It feels very communal, and I like that a lot. So I’m really looking forward to playing.”
Another day at PokerGO Studio
Wilson was one of the final three to get into the field at the PGT Championship, along with Shannon Shorr and Martin Zamani. The tournament plays with unique rules that award different starting stack tiers among the field.
The championship invites the top 40 players from the PokerGO Tour leaderboard, as well as various other qualifiers. The players that finished highest on the leaderboard get the biggest starting stacks, while qualifiers like Wilson get smaller stacks.
That means players like PGT Leaderboard frontrunners like Jeremy Ausmus (350,000 starting chips), Daniel Negreanu (340,000), and Seth Davies (333,000) begin today’s two-day event with the biggest stacks in the room.
Wilson, along with Shorr and Zamani, started with 125,000.
“I think the format is really cool,” Wilson said. “It’ll be the first one I’ve played where I’m entering the tournament with a different starting stack than other people. I’ll be coming in at a slight disadvantage to most of the rest of the field, but given my path here I’m ok with it, and I’m ready to just grind from 125K.”
The blinds start at 500/1000/1000 for the PGT Championship, which means Wilson still has plenty of chips to play with.
Can Wilson continue the heater?
Wilson is one of many top-tier high-stakes players in a field that’s as loaded as it gets at the PGT Championship. He’s coming off of a career year in 2024, one in which he claimed more than $2.1 million in live tournaments.
Wilson’s 2024 run included two wins in high roller events at Seminole Hard Rock, as well as a fourth-place finish. Wilson earned more than $1 million in those three tournaments alone.
“2024 was honestly surreal,” Wilson said. “Mostly because of my results in Florida. I can’t express enough how much gratitude I have to have run well in the big spots. Those could have gone the other way, but they went my way. You just have to kind of be in awe of the ways the cards run sometimes.”
PokerOrg asked Wilson who he thinks will come away with the PGT Championship win this weekend.
“I’m gonna go with me (laughs). If I didn’t bet on myself I’d probably go with David Coleman,” Wilson said. “He’s got a lot of chips, he’s GPI Player of the Year, and he’s a good friend of mine.”
Photos courtesy of PokerGO/Antonio Abrego
