Allen "Acnyc718" Chang wins 2020 WSOP Online Event #5: $1,000 No-Limit Hold’em

Allen “Acnyc718” Chang captured his first World Series of Poker bracelet Sunday night, winning Event #5: $1,000 No-Limit Hold’em in the 2020 WSOP Online. It was a lengthy tournament, taking ten and a half hours to whittle down from 854 players to just one. For the victory, Chang banked $161.286.44.

I’m not sure if TheHendonMob.com database will count this on Chang’s record since it was an online event and the database only tracks live tournaments (thus, I’m assuming it won’t), but if it does, the score will nearly double Chang’s lifetime earnings of $215,567. He has competed in the World Series of Poker for a decade; Chang came close to a bracelet in 2012 when he finished 15th in the $2,500 10-Game Six-Handed event.

A total of 126 players made the money in this tournament, with a min-cash amounting to $1,622.60. A $622 profit is not necessarily worth the time, travel cost, and effort at the traditional WSOP in Las Vegas, but man, I would certainly be happy with that sort of payday sitting at home, playing online. Only the players who made the nine-handed final table even made five-figures, though, and Chang was the only person to eclipse the $100,000 mark.

Chang dominated most of the final table

Chang was the chip leader going into the final table, holding 3.7 million chips. Quintin “AA_QTiP_KK” Trammell and Josh “charliefrog” Greenberg were the two short stacks at fewer than 800,000 chips and were the first to bow out. After John “Slapshot1085” Forlenza was eliminated in seventh place, Chang had extended his lead, now growing his stack to more than 5 million.

He knocked out Alexander “ShadowFiend1” Condon in sixth place in a J-J versus A-K race to climb to 8.6 million chips and then Tim “married” Begley in fifth to move on up to nearly 10 million.

After two more players were shown the door, Chang went into heads-up play against Philip “tomte” Yeh with an enormous chip advantage, 12.2 million to 4.9 million.

But as we well know, this is poker and anything can happen. Sometimes nothing interesting happens and the huge chip leader cruises to victory, but this was not one of those times. Within about 15 minutes, Yeh had grabbed the lead, nearly doubling Chang’s total. But Chang roared back (obviously), regained the lead a few minutes later, and iced the match.

With just 2.9 million chips remaining, Yeh shoved with 8-6 suited. Chang called with Q-J, trying to avoid low cards and clubs. The flop was 4-J-7 with one club, pairing Chang’s Jack, but also giving Yeh a gutshot straight draw. Another club on the turn gave Yeh even more outs with a flush draw, but nothing came through on the river, giving Allen Chang the WSOP title.