Huahuan Feng didn’t earn nearly as high of a return on his investment in the WSOP Big 50 event as did the Bellagio slot player who recently turned a $5.88 spin into nearly $4 million (68,027,110% ROI). We doubt he’s complaining, however, after spinning up his $50 buy-in into $211,282 and a gold World Series of Poker bracelet.
The first-ever Big 50 took place last year at the 50th annual WSOP in Las Vegas, and cost $500 to enter. That historic tournament set a live poker record with 28,371 entries. Femi Fashakin was the last person standing, taking home $1,147,499.
This year’s Big 50 was played online on GGPoker due to COVID-19 instead of at the Rio. The buy-in was just $50, the lowest in the World Series of Poker’s 51-year history.
Feng Earns Impressive ROI
There aren’t many investment opportunities that provide a 422,464% return unless your name is Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates. Or, Huahuan Feng, who paid the $50 buy-in for the WSOP Big 50 event and cashed out on top of the 44,576-player field with $211,282 and his first bracelet.
GGPoker guaranteed a $1 million prize pool for the bracelet event, but the actual prize pool surpassed $2 million. The cheapest WSOP buy-in ever also had the largest field in World Series of Poker history, and it wasn’t even close.
More than 4,000 players cashed in this low-stakes online poker tournament. As soon as the money bubble burst, players began dropping like flies. With the blinds getting big, forcing many into an all-in-or-fold situation, the action moved quickly on Day 2 (Sunday).
While most players hit the showers, Feng continued chipping up, winning race after race, and repeatedly finding himself on the positive end of cooler hands. That’s pretty much the only way to effectively navigate through and win such a massive field poker tournament.
After 44,574 players were eliminated, Feng was heads-up with the chip lead against Xue qiao Zhao for the bracelet. The heads-up match lasted just a couple of minutes when both players got it all-in pre-flop with Feng holding A-6 against K-6. The board ran out J-Q-2-9-J to finish off the two-day tournament. Zhao earned $159,705 for coming just one spot shy of winning a WSOP bracelet.
Feng won his first bracelet and also the largest score of his career, but not by much. In Dec. 2018, he finished second in a Jeju Red Dragon event for $176,985.
