At Long Last, Michael Wang Takes Home The Title at the WPT Playground Championship

Photo: Newly-crowned WPT Champion Michael Wang

It was a long time coming for Michael Wang.

Wang has been playing on the World Poker Tour for a decade. He’s cashed in more than 20 main events across the United States and Asia, winning nearly $400,000 along the way. But a final table, let alone a title, had always eluded him.

That ended today when Wang emerged atop the 840-player field to win the WPT Playground Championship and CAD $384,738 first prize, finally getting his name engraved on the Mike Sexton WPT Champions Cup.

“Really got the monkey off my back. I was happy with the final table, and this is so much above that. It feels a little surreal and I’m sure it will sink in a little bit later,” Wang said after defeating Santiago Plante heads-up.

The 36-year-old Las Vegas resident already had an impressive resume and titles that established him as one of the best No-Limit Hold’em players in the game today. He’s won two WSOP bracelets, a High Roller at the Wynn in Las Vegas last year, and had more than $6 million in live earnings. But a WPT title stands out in a career full of highlights. “WPTs are really up there for me. It’s like an amazing brand. It’s a world-class, truly global poker tour. I’m super happy to get this title. Hopefully, it takes this momentum with me to the WPT World Championship,” he said.

Wang nearly didn’t even come to Montreal for the series, making his victory here at Playground feel almost like fate. “It’s always the close calls. When you expect something you never get it. I felt like the fact that it was out of the way a little bit, it feels almost like destiny,” he said.

Wang’s path to the title wasn’t a straight upwards trajectory but rather an up-and-down, rollercoaster ride that saw him drop down to a short stack, rise back up again, and finally finish with all the chips. It started during the nine-handed final table two days ago, when Wang was all in with king-jack against two opponents but managed to hit a king to triple up. At the six-handed final table today, he lost a massive all in with ace-queen against Zachary Fischer’s jack-ten and had to rebuild his stack yet again.

He first doubled up off start-of-day chip leader Baron Ha, then spiked a full house holding pocket nines to bust Jordan Grant in fourth place. He finally picked up two sevens to eliminate Ha in third place, taking a chip lead of 24,300,000 to 17,400,000 into heads-up play against Plante. On the 19th hand of heads-up play and 168th of the final table, Wang hit a pair of queens on the flop to beat Plante’s king-high and take the title. But Wang still looks back at that pivotal hand two days ago as the turning point in his tournament.

“That was a big one. I got down short at the final table. I had king-jack, I had 12 big blinds left, and I was in late position so I just went all in. The guy to the left calls, and then the guy to his left calls, and I’m like I’m just dead, I’m out. But I spike a king on the flop so I tripled up. From there I made a few small pots here and there and managed to get into the final table in the middle of the pack, and that’s when it started to feel like, oh, okay, I’ve got a real shot here,” Wang said.

“It was also a very deep final table, overall…With hour levels at the final table, there was so much play. I think that the kind of bad beat I took with the ace-queen against the jack-ten suited, when he four-bet all in and I lost the hand, having such a great structure and being so deep gave me a real shot to come back. Probably an outside shot, but at least I got it this time.”

1st: Michael Wang – CAD $384,738** (US $276,634)
2nd: Santiago Plante – CAD $292,635* ($210,417)
3rd: Baron Ha- CAD $196,000 (US $141,083)
4th: Jordan Grant – CAD $146,000 (US $105,093)
5th: Zachary Fischer – CAD $111,000 (US $79,899)
6th: Amirpasha Emami – CAD $84,000 (US $60,464)

*Denotes a heads-up deal
*First-prize amount includes winner’s US $10,400 seat into the season-ending WPT World Championship at Wynn Las Vegas
NOTE:  For worldwide consistency across all WPT events, the amounts on the Payouts page are in U.S. dollars. For this event, payouts have been converted using a rate of CAD $1.00 = US $0.72)

The decade-long wait finally ended for Wang, so now finds his name engraved among poker legends of the past on the Champions Cup. With the WPT title he’s long coveted, he’s well on his way to making his own legacy in this game.