When most of the poker pros roll into a poker tournament room, they not only bring years and years of knowledge compounded like interest to the tables, but also something that helps put them in a league of their own — plenty of ammunition.
Whether from backers or their own bankrolls, most pros come to the game armed with more than one buy-in — or bullet — no matter how rich the tournament costs. And because brick and mortar cardrooms don’t include the number of bullets a player fired when releasing results, its up to the players themselves to self-report it to the fans, if they feel like it.
And some players did feel like it this year, including the man who wound up with the most Player of the Year points this summer, Shaun Deeb.
Deeb revealed on X that it took him 122 bullets to cash six times, including a deep run in the Main Event that seemingly irked him since he couldn’t pad his POY points by entering tournaments during the week he was in it.
What did that get Deeb? Three final tables in six cashes and his ninth WSOP bracelet for a total of $947,106. Out of the $410,475 came in the Main Event deep-run where he finished 15th. How much he spent is mystery.
That figure is pushed over $1 million because he also won a $100,000 package to WSOP Paradise that takes place in the Bahamas in December for finishing in the top three of the summer’s leaderboard.
A bunch of players commented on his tweet with buy-in revelations of their own:
| Player | Entries | Cashes |
| Chris Hunichen | 89 | 14 |
| Andreas Froehli | 83 | 16 |
| Chris Vitch | 75 | 13 |
| Francis Anderson | 73 | 11 |
| David Baker | 72 | 10 |
| Jamie Dwan | 71 | 10 |
| Darren Rabinowitz | 69 | 7 |
| Kenny Hallaert | 65 | 14 |
| John Wasnock | 62 | 10 |
| Bryce Yockey | 61 | 12 |
| Joseph Cheong | 60 | 9 |
| Brian Rast | 59 | 10 |
| Ryan Riess | 56 | 18 |
| Brian Hastings | 53 | 10 |
| Matt Salsberg | 51 | 7 |
| Yaser Al-Keliddar | 44 | 8 |
| Faraz Jaka | 44 | 10 |
| Ronnie Bardah | 36 | 8 |
| Daniel Strelitz | 30 | 5 |
| Naoya Kihara | 90 | 18 |
| Josh Arieh | 69 | 15 |
| Ryan LaPlante | 70 | 15 |
| John Richards | 85 | 10 |
So let this be a warning to recreational players who dream of competing against the big boys and girls.
The buy-in listed is really not the buy-in, and those showing up with one bullet and are essentially playing the tournaments as a personal freezeout have a major disadvantage.
When they’re at the tournament poker table, money to these players is merely a tool to put themselves in the best position to get deep and try for the serious money that only comes at the final tables in these events. They are dying to get their chips in the pots early, even when they are at significant odds disadvantage because they only have to reach in the wallets and pull out another wad of cash to start over.
This is one of the many reasons the game has gotten a whole lot harder.
