Still only a mere two years old, WPT Global has become one of the fastest-growing online poker operators in the industry and jumped to third place in the global cash game ranking. With a steady flow of promotions, they are attracting traffic from all over the world despite not currently allowing sign-ups from the vast majority of regulated jurisdictions.
They have assembled a small but elite team of ambassadors, containing three up-and-coming poker pros as well as an old school online poker legend and one player who many consider as one of the greatest to showcase his talents in both high-stakes cash games and tournaments.
Brad Owen – Vlogger and Meet-Up-Game Host Extraordinaire
While vlogging may have become very popular among the younger generation especially, it is rather new in the world of poker. One of the first to path the way was Brad Owen, who focused on low and mid-stakes cash games. This has brought him more than 750k followers on YouTube and he has also won a Global Poker Award for his vlogs as well.
Together with Andrew Neeme, he formed a duo formidable to gather momentum for the Meet-Up Games (MUG) format in poker rooms all over the world. Many a times, they can be found together at World Poker Tour stops where they host fun cash games to kick off the festival.
While primarily a cash game player, he is no slouch in tournament poker either. At the time of writing, he has cashed for $817,931 in live poker and WSOP Online tournaments during pandemic days with his first minor score dating all the way back to July 2016.
In May 2023, he finished fourth out of 346 entries in the WPT Gardens Poker Championship for $125,000 and he followed that up with another two six-figure scores. During the 2023 WPT World Championship at Wynn Las Vegas, he finished third in a $10,000 8-Max tournament for $107,800 before also cashing in the WPT World Championship a few days later. The biggest score came one week later when his seventh place in the $50,000 WPT Alpha8 High Roller came with a payday of $152,266.
Ethan “Rampage” Yau
One of the players inspired by the efforts of Neeme and Owen, Ethan Yau leaped in their footsteps and gathered a large following with more than 287k subscribers on YouTube to date. He earned the nickname of “Rampage”, which may very well have to to with his rapid rise in stakes and aggressive playing style.
He started learning poker while playing low-stakes cash games and within two years, skyrocketed to some of the highest stakes available in live-streamed environments – one of which required a buy-in of $1,000,000. The wins and losses in these nosebleed sessions have been a roller coaster ride for “Rampage” so far.
The first two live poker cashes at the Encore Boston Harbor were small four figure prizes but during the global pandemic, he started live-streaming his sessions on the online poker tables as well. That brought almost immediate success when he won the $500 Grande Finale of the 2020 WSOP Online for $164,494. Many WSOP Online cashes followed before he struck gold in a $1,100 MSPT DeepStack Championship for $230,379.
Most of 2022 was filled with smaller online scores once more before another live poker victory followed in the PokerGO Tour Poker Masters 2022 for $197,600. Three months later during the inaugural WPT World Championship at Wynn Las Vegas, he took down a $25,000 High Roller for a top prize of $894,240 – his largest live poker score to date. Several other five-figure results came in 2023 and he then added a runner-up finish during the Wynn Millions Poker Series in March 2024 to his resume for $123,250.
Yau isn’t one to shy away from sharing his roller coaster rides and hefty losing sessions on social media, but also doesn’t bow down from issuing challenges to all those taking shots at him instead of joining the high-stakes action themselves.
Angel Guillen – Mexican Crusher and WSOP Bracelet Winner
One face that has been around for more than a decade on the live poker circuit and seemingly hasn’t aged at all is Mexican poker pro Angel Guillen. He is second on his country’s all-time money list with nearly $2.5 million in cashes and his better half is WPT anchor Lynn Gilmartin.
Guillen emerged on the live poker circuit all the way back to 2009 and within ten days, Sin City pulled him into the spot. On June 5, he finished as the runner-up in a $2,500 WSOP Event for $312,800 and then posed for the winner shots a mere ten days later. This time, it was a $2,000 buy-in with 1,534 entries in which he prevailed to win his maiden gold bracelet and a top prize of $530,548.
Throughout the years after, he added deep runs in South America to his poker resume but was denied another six-figure score until February 2023. That’s when he made the trip to Australia for the WPT Prime Gold Coast stop in which he took down a AU$5,000 Challenge for AU$ 182,594 ($122,864). A few months later, he reached another WSOP Final Table in Las Vegas in Event #35 Secret Bounty $10,000 and earned $127,515 for his sixth place finish.
The charismatic Mexican can usually be found well-dressed at the poker tables without showing any major emotions. But the South American blood was boiling on the rail of the most recent 2024 WSOP Prime Gold Coast Championship when cheering on Andres Vasquez, who eventually finished as the runner-up.
Jon “apestyles” Van Fleet – Legendary Online Crusher
To most live poker players, the name Jon Van Fleet may not ring a bell because the American poker pro “only has fewer than $900,000” in cashes on his Hendon Mob profile. The main reason for that is rather simple, as the online arena is his natural habitat in which he has racked up more than $20 million in cashes.
Van Fleet has been around the online streets for many years and boasts more than 10 years experience of coaching other players as well. He is the co-author of the strategy book “Winning Poker Tournaments One Hand at a Time” and sure knows about that, after all he won the 2017 partypoker Millions for $1,027,000, for example.
He is also an old school content creator and streams his online exploits regularly, while not giving away too many of his secrets. In 2022, he narrowly missed a victory in the $1,050 WPTDeepStacks Online on partypoker and had to settle for just $392,717 as the runner-up. The biggest live poker score came in June 2023 when he made it all the way to fourth place in Event #44 $3,000 No Limit Hold’em for $238,546.
Phil Ivey – High-Stakes Legend and Ten-Time WSOP Bracelet winner
Phil Hellmuth holds the record for most WSOP bracelets with seventeen as of 2023. When asking poker players from all over the world which contender may overtake that tally, many mention Phil Ivey almost immediately. He seemingly hasn’t aged ever since emerging as one of the hottest prospects in live poker and won ten WSOP gold bracelets so far.
That number alone is already impressive but he has done so in multiple different variants such as Pot-Limit Omaha, Seven Card Stud, Seven Card Stud Hi-Lo, SHOE, No-Limit 2-7, HORSE, and 8-Game Mix. However, there is no Hold’em bracelet on his poker resume despite his proven record in the televised high-stakes cash games against the game’s other greats. He is one of the most-feared opponents in the nosebleed cash game stakes and has shown his incredible reads time and time again.
Along the way, Ivey has racked up more than $42.5 million in cashes on his Hendon Mob profile and sits in eleventh place on the all-time money list so far, having recently dropped out of the top ten with the rise of David Peters, Erik Seidel, Ike Haxton, Dan Smith and Mikita Badziakouski in the Triton High Roller Events. Of course, Ivey has also been competing in these tournaments as well and most of his recent cashes all come from Triton tournaments with multiple titles under his belt in the last two years.
He has eleven scores of $1 million or more to his name and the top three tournament cashes were achieved during the Aussie Millions in 2012, 2014 and 2015 respectively. All three came in AU$ 250,000 buy-ins and all three of them were wins with the largest being worth AU$4,000,000 nine years ago, when the Aussie Dollar was far stronger and equaled approximately $3,582,753.
Ivey had stayed under the radar for several years in the last decade, or his WSOP bracelet tally and overall tournament cashes may be even higher. He always leaves before bagging and tagging for the night and tips the staff or dealers accordingly while never saying too many words in table chat. But when he does, it is usually a very dry sense of humor.
He became a World Poker Tour ambassador in November 2022 and is arguably the most high-profile signing for the brand to date.
More to Come?
Whether or not any other big name will be joining the fray in the near future remains to be seen. The WPT continues to expand the brand all over the world and raised the bar significantly with the annual WPT World Championship at Wynn Las Vegas in December, which was first introduced in 2022.
Sign up to WPT Global – Softest fields!
Did you know that WPT brand launched WPT Global? WPT Global is one of the fastest growing rooms, has a soft field, and offers action in every limit.
Read our WPT Global review or register here:
*Article by Christian Zetzsche
About The Author
