Analysis: Amateurs crushing record-setting fields at World Series of Poker

By Case Keefer (contact)

Saturday, June 20, 2015 | 2 a.m.

Seven years have passed since an amateur won poker’s world championship.

It’s been less than seven days, however, since a non-professional won one of the game’s biggest tournaments ever. The 2015 World Series of Poker started last month with the aim of attracting more recreational players.

The 46th annual event has ended up getting overtaken by them. The WSOP has staged three of the seven largest tournaments of all time at its midway point, and a player who had never previously cashed at the Rio won each of them.

Perry Shiao, a 26-year-old poker dealer from South Florida, became the latest to scoop a life-changing and mind-boggling sum of money when he won $1,286,942 Wednesday evening in the $1,500 buy-in Monster Stack event.

“I came out here to chase the dream,” Shiao told WSOP.com immediately after his victory. “My birthday was the first day this tournament started. I couldn’t have given myself a better birthday gift.”

Shiao joined Adrian Buckley, who won $1.2 million in the $1,500 buy-in Millionaire Maker, and Cord Garcia, who amassed $638,880 in the $565 buy-in Colossus, as previous unknowns who morphed into the summer’s biggest winners.

The three’s combined WSOP earnings may have been nil weeks ago, but they’ve now ballooned up to more than $3.2 million. They outlasted a total of 36,836 other entrants to win their WSOP bracelets.

It’s a remarkable occurrence that’s not getting enough attention, not at least compared with the streak dating back to 2008 of young professionals winning the $10,000 buy-in Main Event.

The 25-year-old Garcia is the only one who identifies as a pro, though he was more prolific in mid-stakes games before this summer with about $160,000 of earnings and a championship on the WSOP circuit. Buckley, a 27-year-old from outside of Denver, works as an electrical engineer.

“I really didn’t think I’d be here,” Buckley gushed after his win. “I mean, getting through 7,000 people, it’s not something you think about until it happens. I hoped to run super deep, and knew I had the skill to get there. But it’s just surreal to live out the dream.”

Just as Buckley boarded a plane the day after his win to get back to his job at Lockheed-Martin, Shiao flew cross-country to not miss his shift at the Seminole Hard Rock casino in Hollywood, Fla. Garcia has stuck around Las Vegas — and cashed in two more events — but makes his home in Houston.

WSOP officials must be thrilled, and for far more than the bonus that they now have ambassadors by default spread out in three separate regions of the country. The victories prove that poker remains a game for everybody.

Some outsiders developed a misguided notion that professionals rule the poker realm in recent years without an accountant like Chris Moneymaker or a college student like Peter Eastgate prevailing on the grandest stage for so long. These three tournaments weren’t quite the Main Event, which begins on July 5 this year, but they were the closest relatives.

Given the preponderance of amateurs, it wouldn’t have been unbelievable to expect one of the massive events to be won by a player with no previous WSOP track record. But predicting all of them to go that route would have been only a smidgen more likely than calling for Phil Hellmuth to win his 14th, 15th and 16th bracelets in the Colossus, Millionaire Maker and Monster Stack.

“It was a little nerve-wracking,” Buckley said. “But then I took it one step at a time and things got easier. After a while I realized, ‘it’s just a poker game,’ and that’s when I felt really comfortable.”

Poker’s charm has always revolved around anyone who pays the buy-in being put on a level playing field with the best in the world. A month into the 2015 WSOP, the appeal is as dazzling as ever.

Case Keefer can be reached at 948-2790 or [email protected]. Follow Case on Twitter at twitter.com/casekeefer.