We caught up with the new Mid-States Poker Tour champion Alexander Wong after his tournament victory in the $1,100 buy-in MSPT Venetian Main Event for a quick winner interview, and here is what he had to say on a number of topics. Wong is from Ottawa, Canada, and his first tournament win took his career poker earnings up to $284,977.
“I’m not a tournament player, this is my first tournament victory. This was all about fun. I have no idea what I’m doing heads up, so I’m mainly just clicking buttons. Sometimes he’s going to win, sometimes I’m going to win I guess. Luckily I got in their good in the end. I was hoping for the win, but whatever happens, happens. If I had lost that’s just how it goes,” said Wong right after securing the title.
He continued, “I’m dead tired, I’m jet lagged since I’m still on East Coast time. I got in two days ago, but I’m sure at some point we will do something fun to celebrate. I honestly wasn’t even going to play, but my girlfriend convinced me to play. She’s on this tournament heater so she said, ‘let’s play this $1k over at The Venetian. We regged the last Day 1 yesterday, made it through and bagged yesterday to make it to today. This is the first tournament I’ve played in Vegas this summer, and it was super, super fun to go all the way. I’ve played a bunch of Venetian events for the DeepStack Extravaganzas, but I think this is the first MSPT-branded one.
“It was awesome, winning is definitely the highlight of my trip laughs. But the whole thing was well-run. The structure was great. We started the day with like 70 big blinds. We rolled back since 1A ended super early so it was great to get all those extra levels of play to really play poker. Again, I’m not really a tournament player so really just clicking buttons and hoping it came out all right laughs. And it did, and here we are. I used to play cash full-time, but I retired a couple of years ago so I actually don’t play too much poker anymore,” said Wong to end the table-side chat.
Congrats to the new MSPT champion Alexander Wong! Action will pick back up here at the Venetian Poker Room for the next MSPT Main Event that begins on June 2nd right on the Las Vegas Strip. We will see you then with more live reporting from the tournament floor for that $1,600 buy-in no-limit hold’em tournament with two starting flights followed by a playdown day to another winner on June 5th.