Jeremy Wien – Poker Player – A non-professional player from NY

Jeremy Wien is a non-professional poker player who has had a lot of success on the felt, culminating in reaching the pinnacle of poker—winning a World Series of Poker Bracelet—in 2018. This page summarizes his poker “career,” from learning to play in college through winning a WSOP Bracelet in 2018, to today.

Jeremy’s poker results have been a case study in the expression, “two steps forward, one step back,” which is not surprising given that poker has never been his full-time focus. He does not play cash games and rarely plays tournaments outside of the WSOP period from late-May through early-July. Additionally, he travels to those tournaments with his wife and kids, often back-and-forth from New York several times during the summer, as he has a full-time non-poker career.

Jeremy Wien giving two thumbs up during WSOP poker game

Here is a summary of Jeremy’s poker-playing, broken into 5 periods based on his publicly-available results as well as articles (some including first-person interviews) published in the aftermath of his 2018 WSOP Bracelet victory.

Learning to Play:

Jeremy first started playing No-Limit Texas Hold’Em while attending Georgetown University. As he tells it, as a sophomore, in 2004, he was invited by a friend to play in a game at an upper-classman’s apartment. Within a few minutes of starting to play, he’d lost his entire buy-in. Since he was enjoying playing, he headed to the atm to take out more cash to buy back in; as he left the table, he over-heard the host say, “hey Will, thanks for bringing your friend,” as the rest of the table laughed. Motivated by the desire to “never be the sucker again,” Jeremy created an online poker account on PokerStars, playing mostly low-stakes tournaments to get in as many practice hands as possible. From what we can tell, he did not have any monster online cashes but did have several decent results in the Sunday Million between 2004 and the 2006 passing of the UIGEA (many players continued to play online until Black Friday in 2011, but Mr. Wien appears to have stopped in 2006).

Early WSOP Playing (2006-2009):

In his first eligible WSOP, in 2006, Jeremy played a single event and did not cash. In 2007, he garnered his first WSOP cash, taking 78^th place in a $1,500 NLHE event (out of 3,000+ players). After a small cash in a Venetian Deepstack event in the summer of 2009, Jeremy made a semi-deep run in that summer’s WSOP Main Event, making Day 5 before busting out in 282^nd place out of almost 6,500 players.

Meager Years (2010-2013):

During these years, Jeremy maintained little dedication to poker and admittedly did not work on improving his game. He had only one WSOP cash over this four-summer period, taking 367^th in the first event he played in the 2010 WSOP. We don’t know exactly how many consecutive events he played without a cash in the remainder of 2010 and the 2011-2013 WSOPs, but it appears to be at least twenty.

Better Focus, Game Improving (2014-2016):

Jeremy has said that in the wake of the 2013 WSOP, he was introspective and determined that if he were going to continue to compete in WSOP events regularly, he needed to work to improve his game, even with limited spare time due to a demanding career. While he couldn’t necessarily play more than he had in previous years, he increased his poker dialogue with friends and others who were skilled players, discussing hand histories and scenarios at a higher frequency in an effort to improve his game. With a WSOP Circuit Main Event Final Table (6^th place) in December of 2013 and another WSOP Circuit Main Event cash (24^th) in April of 2014, Jeremy took his improved game to the 2014 WSOP. After winning his table to cash in the $1,500 NLHE Shootout early in the summer, he continued with a cash in a Rio Daily Deepstacks event. Shortly before the Main Event, in a $5,000 NLHE event (typically one of the strongest fields of the summer, given the relatively high buy-in but lack of amateur satellite winners like we see in the Main Event), Jeremy took 11^th place out of almost 800 players; he was 2^nd in chips with 11 remaining, before unfortunately running pocket queens into pocket kings for almost all of his chips, busting out shortly thereafter. He followed up this near-final-table by cashing in the Main Event, taking 377^th place out of almost 6,700 players.

Continuing the “two steps forward, one step back” pattern mentioned earlier, Jeremy followed up his strong 2014 with only modest success in 2015 (three notable cashes—one each in the WSOP, WSOP Circuit, and WPT) and an 0-fer in 2016. It should be noted that his job prevented him from playing the Main Events in 2015 and 2016, but still his results were softer in the couple of years following his 2014 successes.

An Elite Amateur Player (2017-present):

Starting in the summer of 2017, while still rarely playing in between WSOP “seasons,” Jeremy began to play more events during the WSOP, from an average of 4-6 per Series to roughly twice that. Whether it was “getting into a groove” during the Series of some other reason for improvement in his game, the results have been among the best for non-professional players that we’ve seen.

2017: 9^th and 11^th place finishes in Venetian Deepstack events and 4 relatively deep WSOP cashes—32^nd in a $1,000 NLHE (out of 2,000+), 101^st in the $1,500 Monster Stack (out of 6,700+), 29^th in a $1,500 NLHE (out of 1,500+), and 68^th in a $1,500 NLHE (out of 1,500+)

2018: A WPT cash early in the year and limited WSOP play relative to 2017 and 2019—Jeremy made the most of when he did play in 2018, winning event #20, the $5,000 NLHE Big Blind Ante (it included that in the title, because it was the first year in which Big Blind Ante was tried in select WSOP events—now it’s a staple in all). Out of 518 players, Jeremy bested a star-studded field; here is a sampling of the other players who made the final 8 tables of the event: Erik Seidel, Upeshka De Silva, Kane Kalas, Tom Cannuli, Humberto Brenes, Antoine Saout, Tim Reilly, Brian Yoon, Bryn Kenney, David Pham, Anthony Spinella, Justin Bonomo, Dom Nitsche, Kristen Bicknell, Seth Davies, Nick Pupillo, Stephen Chidwick, Asi Moshe…and that was before working through a Final Table that included David Peters, Shawn Buchanan, Jake Schindler, and Eric Blair. Heads-up play began with Jeremy trailing David Laka in chips by almost 5-1; after a grueling 10 hour Final Table, including 5 hours heads-up, Jeremy won his first WSOP Bracelet.

2019: 5 WSOP cashes—63^rd in the $1,500 NLHE Millionaire-Maker (out of 8,880+), 73^rd in the $3,000 NLHE 6-max (out of 750+), 18^th in the $3,000 NLHE Shootout (winning first round, lost heads-up in second round to make final table), 52^nd in a $1,000 NLHE (out of 1,750), and 89^th in the $5,000 NLHE 6-max (out of 800+)

2020: 9 cashes in the online WSOP, including a 24^th (out of 2,100+) and a 21^st (out of 1,000+)

2021: 4 WSOP cashes, including 415th in a tournament of almost 13,000 entries and 71st in a tournament of almost 2,800 entries

2022: 10 WSOP cashes, including a Final Table in the $1,500 Freezeout and 181st place in the WSOP Main Event.

941st out of 20,080 in the “Housewarming”
177th out of 1,213 in the WSOP.com online “Big 50”
247th out of 5,715 in a NLHE “Deepstack”
176th out of 2,663 in a NLHE “Freezeout”
143rd out of 1,256 in the “Flip N Go”
8th out of 1,774 in a NLHE “Freezeout”
115th out of 2,569 in the “Super Turbo Bounty”
382nd out of 5,833 in the Mini-Main-Event
181st out of 8,663 in the WSOP Main Event
280th out of 2,812 in a NLHE “Deepstack”

In limited online play, Jeremy added 5 cashes in the WSOP’s 2022 online series, including a Final Table in the “Ultra Deepstack”

Jeremy Wien smiling at WSOP 2022. Photo by Katerina Lukina. — Jeremy Wien, WSOP 2022

2023: After a WPT cash in a rare non-WSOP live appearance early in the year, Jeremy cashed 6 times in the 2023 WSOP, although he did not quite match his 2022 success.

1,075th out of 18,188 in the “Mystery Millions”
73rd out of 6,085 in a NLHE “Deepstack”
177th out of 2,454 in a NLHE “6-Max”
2,153rd out of 23,088 in the “Gladiators of Poker”
141st out of 10,416 in the “Millionaire Maker”
312th out of 5,257 in the “Mini Main Event”

Coming of age during the “Moneymaker Boom,” Jeremy Wien has an impressive poker resume, especially for someone who has a family and a full-time job and rarely plays more than a handful of events per year. It will be interesting to see if he ever dedicates himself more fully to the game, and if so, whether he can move up into the top tier of players globally.