Over the past few years few poker players in the world can compare to the huge success of Stephen Song. Recently, Stephen has won an EPT Main Event in Barcelona to add to a WPT Prime Championship and WSOP bracelet. He’s cashed five times in the first month of the year in PokerGO events for over $250,000, and this week is selling action to the PokerGO Cup.
We caught up with Stephen for a deep dive into what has made his career so special.
An Early Victory
“If you win right away, you stay in the game. If you brick right away, you probably quit!”
Stephen has been playing the game online for well over a decade but his first cash in the live arena came back in 2016. Amazingly, his first score was an outright victory, as he claimed $32,957 in the $570-entry October Poker Weekend tournament in Verona.
“The first official tournament I played, I won. It’s survivorship – if you win right away, you stay in the game. If you brick right away, you probably quit!”
Looking back, Stephen credits this initial win with placating his parents as he looked to stay in poker by playing live as well as grinding tournaments online too.
“I’d just dropped out of college for a year,” he says. “My parents wanted me to take classes but I was playing poker and it was hard to convince them it was the right thing to do. Winning that tournament for $32,000 was for more money than I’d ever seen. I thought ‘This is real’. it made playing poker feel more possible.”
Stephen admits that by cutting his teeth online, he’d almost been ‘trained’ not to expect to win. After taking down his first live event, it took him two years to get another win but he had a lot of respect for the brutality of tournament poker.
“To get second is nice – it pays well!” he laughs. “As long as you’re top three, it’s OK. I was never disappointed in second.
A Blessing in Disguise
“I was trying to win very hand. It’s hard to prove yourself because you don’t have the results.”
Reaching the final table of the $3,500 buy-in WPT Borgata Winter Poker Open Championship in Atlantic City, Stephen couldn’t help hoping the next win was going to be a big one for a top prize of over $650,000.
“In that Borgata WPT Main Event, I was first of [the final] nine with 35% of the chips in play,” he says. But there was one issue with that, as Stephen tells us. “I was 22, a young, ego-kid! I was trying to win very hand. It’s hard to prove yourself because you don’t have the results, so you overcompensate with your play, making all these moves. I used to show bluffs because I such a little idiot! You’re fighting the eternal battle of whether you belong there.”
As Stephen took on eight opponents with the equal dream of winning a WPT Main Event, he admits that while his primary aim should have been to make money, it was something far more mischievous.
“My main goal was to make people’s lives miserable at the table!” he laughs. “Not with how I was acting, but with my play. After two big bluffs didn’t work, Zach Gruneberg got me in a big pot and he was leader after I bluffed off some chips to him. He had a set of jacks and I ended up getting sixth.”
Years later, Stephen looked back on his first foray at a massive televised final table and admits it makes him cringe.
“I watched it back and I played awfully! I didn’t have experience of final tables. I remember being really disappointed, but looking back it’s a blessing that I didn’t go on and ‘sun it’. In poker, it’s really easy to rip off a massive score and you think you’re ‘the man’ and it crumbles. At 22 years old, if I had a $650k score, I’d have been playing everything, every $3,500, every $5k, every $10k maybe. Pacing yourself is really important.”
Winning or losing isn’t totally within any player’s control in tournament poker, of course, but Stephen believes that the variance he felt at the time – Eric Afriat went on to win that title – worked out for him.
“I was backed at the time, and I went off on my own after that – it gave me enough to start with. Because it wasn’t a huge, huge success, I was forced to work hard. I wasn’t too overconfident. Getting sixth for $138k… it was my biggest score for a time and allowed me to grind mid-stakes.”
Over the last decade, Stephen has seen a lot of other players leave the game after initial success.
“A lot of time you see guys fizzle out fast. They win a big score, play stakes that are too high then can’t drop back and play the level they should be playing. Whenever you win a tournament you think you’re the best, it doesn’t matter how you played!”
Winning a WSOP Bracelet
“I was unbagging my chips for the final I saw him on the rail. That was so cool.”
Back in 2019, Stephen won his first World Series of Poker bracelet, fulfilling the ambition of millions of poker players around the world. The $1,000-entry No Limit Hold’em Event #28 had a massive 2,477 entries, and Stephen won the top prize of $341,854 and the prized WSOP bracelet.
“The coolest thing was that with six left, my Dad was following [live reporting] online and he fell asleep. My Mom saw that I bagged around half the chips in play. They were on the East Coast with a three-hour time difference. She booked him a flight and set an alarm. So, when he woke, she said ‘You’re going to Vegas.’ My Dad loved that, he flew over. By the time it started he’d got there. I didn’t know about it, either, so while I was unbagging my chips for the final I saw him on the rail. That was so cool.”
Seconds before playing for a WSOP bracelet, that might not seem like the calm, measured lead-up to a final, and right away, things went wrong. Three hands into the final, Stephen doubled up Renato Kaneoya when he ran his second nut flush into the Brazilian player’s nut flush. The turning point was a fortunate spot that Stephen will never forget.
“I kinda punted,” Stephen confesses. “I three-bet shoved the flop with a seven-high flush draw thinking Ryan Laplante was f**king with me and he had trips. I turned the flush, the river held and I doubled through him to leave him with no chips. I had all the chips and when I made heads-up, it lasted two hands. I had nines versus fives for 20 bigs, and there was a nine on the flop, not even a sweat.”
Despite this being his crowning moment, Stephen called the moment he won ‘a blur’.
“It felt cool, but I wanted to keep playing! Maybe its because I’m older, but it’s more like relief when I win a tournament now. Back then, I was young and hungry, and I wanted to keep playing. Also, part of me wondered if, after winning that big hand against Ryan… did I deserve it? I wanted to keep playing so I’d know.”
A Player in his Prime
“They have nothing to lose – they got heads-up, right? I’m like, let’s get the win.”
After triumphing in a WSOP event for the first time, there was no stopping Stephen, as he continued to battle for major honors under the misapprehension that his success needed to be deserved anew. He admits that this mentality ‘helps me stay grounded’, but to us, it’s more of an elite mindset, that constant need to drive forward, get better and win more.
Winning the WPT Prime Championship after beating fellow bracelet holder Lara Eisenberg in 2002 is a highlight.
“Heads-up is such a different game,” muses Stephen. “It’s important not to judge someone’s heads-up ability based on how they’ve played the tournament. A lot of times, I’ve been playing a tournament and my opponent’s been really tight. You expect them to be tight heads-up… and they go insane. They feel like they’ve done their job, and have nothing to lose – they got heads-up, right? I’m like, let’s get the win. I go into every heads-up with an open mind. I ended up coolering Lara in virtually every hand. I made quads, she had a boat, I had two pair, she had top pair.”
Here’s how Stephen took down that legendary WPT Prime Championship in 2022.
On the back of that victory, Stephen ramped it up even more, and broadened his horizons to include EPT Main Events too. He may not have had the WPT Main Event that guarantees a Triple Crown with both a WSOP and EPT win, but he wanted a big one. They didn’t get much bigger than the EPT Barcelona Main Event, which took place on the 20th anniversary of the legendary tour’s inception.
“The funny thing was that three American players made the final table; me, Rania and Coles [a.k.a. David Coleman]. A lot of Americans made the top 100 too, after being a tiny percentage of the field; Asher Conniff, Brock Wilson and Byron Kaverman were in there. Barcelona is the sickest EPT. I chopped with Andrew Hulme, who I got to know in Vegas a few years ago and is really good. Yeah, it felt great but it was a chop… it doesn’t count!”
Stephen laughs but that victory really put him on the map, earning him $1.42 million and leading to his life changing almost overnight. He believes more U.S. players should try their luck overseas.
“It’s hard for an American to win an EPT, there’s a bias in America that Europeans are really good,” he says. “The ones that come to America are, but they’re the top guys. They’re flying all the way across the Atlantic, they’re the best players. Americans think everyone at an EPT is like that. They’re a different kind of player, they’re more splashy, they go for it more than American players in general. Italian, Spanish, French guys – they’re crazy!”
Staking His Claim
“I’m going to Triton Jeju, and I’ll likely end up in Barcelona too.”
With three huge titles, what is left for Stephen Song to win, now over 30 and in the peak period of his poker career? After travelling for much of 2024, he intends to play more high rollers.
“I should play more at the PokerGO Studio – I can walk there!” he laughs. “I cashed five times there this year for over $250,000, it’s a lot of money. In the past, I’d only show up for the rake reduced bullet, play it, bust, then go home or get something to eat. Now I’m starting to come around to the events and the value in them. I’m re-entering and starting to post some results. I’m going to Triton Jeju, and I’ll likely end up in Barcelona too. This time, I’ve got to win it outright and not chop it!”
Selling to events such as the PokerGO Cup, which is currently running in Las Vegas, and Jeju, which Stephen will travel to later this month, is easy on PokerStake.
“It’s really smooth. Josh [Arieh] makes everything really easy, it’s easy to withdraw and it’s easy to do all round. I think it’s cool that people put their action out there and guys can sweat with them. For publicised tournaments [with live reporting] it’s best. I don’t do too much on social media, but when there’s live reporting and they can track it, it’s great!”
With so much coming his way, Stephen is more than likely to sell to a bunch of events on the horizon. With his track record, you’d be mad to miss out on a piece. Follow Stepehn here on his personal staking page on PokerStake and you can share in his success in 2025.
Photographs by Katerina Lukina and Tomáš Stacha for PokerNews.
