At just 23-years-old Ryan Riess is poker’s new world champion. PokerPlayer’s Frank Op de Woerd spoke with the brash young champ to find out how he did it.
As the final river card hit the table, the realisation that Ryan Riess had won the WSOP Main Event hadn’t fully registered before he was immediately bombarded by friends and family. The crowd hitting the stage was so overwhelming that Riess was thrown belly down on the floor with a pile of people on top, all chanting, ‘Riess the beast!’
After the celebration, the bracelet presentation and the famous photo surrounded by stacks of cash the poker media finally got the chance to talk to the new champion. On the win, Riess said, “It’s just amazing! I’m really just speechless. I’m so happy that all my friends have been out here to watch me and support me. It’s just an amazing feeling.”
From the moment he made the November Nine in July Riess claimed to be the favourite to win it, and even claimed to presenter Kara Scott that he was the best player in the world after dispatching of Farber heads-up. Where does all that confidence come from? “I’ve been dreaming about it [winning the Main Event] for a long time, ever since I was 14 and I saw Moneymaker win,” Riess explained. “I just had a great feeling about it. People say this was the hardest final table in the history of the World Series but I did it!”
Humble beginnings
Riess told us that he started playing poker in 2003 after Moneymaker’s win. “There was a huge poker boom and I started playing as well. I had a $10 home game that ran twice a week and just played all the time with all my friends. I was always winning, so I [thought] maybe I should do this more often.”
It’s been a nine year journey from those $10 games to the $8.3 million win Riess just had, and his unerring self-confidence showed on the final table when he recovered well after a crucial setback heads-up. Both were all-in and Farber needed a Nine or Ace to make a straight and beat Riess’s top pair. The Nine came on the turn and Farber was back in it. Riess, however, “wasn’t too worried about it. I knew that I could still chip away and grind him back down. Obviously I would have wanted to seal the deal but I wasn’t too worried about it.”
After this hand Farber started to gain some momentum but Riess just adjusted his strategy to regain the lead; “Once he got up to 72m I started to play a lot more aggressively. I was c-betting him very light. When he was short I couldn’t really do that and I had to play a little bit smarter, but when he increased his stack I decided to pick up the pace a little bit and grind him back down to what he had before.”
A troubled Queen
Riess’s confidence was so high that he even attempted an ambitious hero call with just Queen-high in one big pot, only to run into Farber’s rivered flush. He doesn’t regret it though, “I was picking up a lot on his body language, like facial tells. Initially I wanted to fold but I just didn’t believe him the entire hand. He bet so huge on the river that it threw me off. It was either a flush or complete air. It was probably a bad call and I’ll get criticised for it but in the end it doesn’t matter.”
Criticism of Riess’s play in the hand exploded on Twitter from top pros like Scott Seiver, Corey Burbick and Griffin Benger. Riess must have been mentioned in thousands of tweets and he wasn’t oblivious to it; ‘There are going to be people like Scott Seiver who say I suck but f**k that, I really don’t care. The Queen- high call was probably really bad and I’ll take some criticism for it but I won and that’s all that matters.”
The future is bright
Every WSOP Main Event champion is instantly anointed an ambassador for poker, whether they like it or not. Previous champions Greg Merson and Pius Heinz never seemed to embrace the idea but Riess is more optimistic. “I’m extremely excited”, he said, and, “I would never have thought that this would happen years and years ago – especially this soon and so early in my life. I’m excited for what the future holds.”
2010 Main Event champion Jonathan Duhamel showed his face in numerous big buy-in tournaments and was among the elite field that competed in the $1m ‘Big One for One Drop’ tournament. Riess doesn’t think he will take it that far, “I don’t know about playing in $100k events unless I sell action.”
After that Riess was gone, off to celebrate the life changing win with his friends and family. But before he left our view poker’s new wonderkid turned around and shouted, ‘Thank you for all the support! I couldn’t have done it without you.”
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