Stephen on Song as NAPT Heroics Boost His Backers

One of the most consistent performers on PokerStake, Stephen Song, paid off his backers yet again this week after soaring to success at the North American Poker Tour (NAPT) in Las Vegas. Winning the $25,000-entry Super High Roller Event #5, Song’s return on investment was a stunning 1657.6%.

The Siren Song of Success Strikes Again

Stephen Song’s package was always an attractive one, and we said as much in our post about the best-value players to invest in before the tournament series kicked off. Song always looked good value in Event #5 and he put his high roller skills to the test and emerged victorious after taking the title in style.

Battling through a final table featuring players such as current Global Poker Index number one Jim Collopy and French poker professional Thomas Eychenne, Song was able to rise through a frantic Day 2 where he made the most of pocket aces just before the final table, which gave him the chips to eliminate both Eychenne and Paul Jager.

Once down to the final four, Song was a big leader. His heads-up opponent turned out to be Sean Winter, who had been very short when play resumed four-handed. Winter’s resurgence posed Song plenty of problems and despite holding a 2:1 chip lead when the final duel began, both Winter and Song held the lead on multiple occasions before Song managed to take the title and the fourth-biggest single score result of his career.

A Spectacular 2024

In his stunning poker career, Stephen Song has won an amazing $8.5 million in just eight years of professional ranking tournament results. His biggest win is the $1.42 million he claimed just two months ago when he became the 2024 EPT Barcelona champion. Also winning big on the World Poker Tour, Song’s second-largest score of $712,650 came in Las Vegas when he won the WPT Prime Championship in December of 2022.

The only other biggest result than this week’s success was Song’s runner-up performance in the $5,000 buy-in WSOP 6-Max Event#46 of 2022, where he just missed out on the gold to the French player Jonathan Pastore. Not that Song hasn’t won on the World Series. He took down the $1,000 entry WSOP event in 2019 and added a WSOP Circuit ring to go with his bracelet in 2023.

If there’s one frustration in 2024, it’s perhaps in the biggest event of all, as Song finished 57^th in the 55^th annual WSOP Main Event in Las Vegas. Banking $160,000, Song once again got a tremendous return on his investment of just $10,000 but would have been a massive threat at the final table with all his experience and he’ll be desperate to get down to the final stages of the World Championship in years to come.

Breaking Down His Big Victory

“It really all came down to that king-eight ballsy call I made.”

In an interview with PokerNews after the NAPT Super High Roller event, Song said that it felt really good to win the tournament where he ‘had to battle some of the best players in the country and even the world’. A crucial hero-call in the final showdown made all the difference.

“It was a long-ass heads-up,” Song said. “It really all came down to that king-eight ballsy call I made. It’s a little easier to call when you have a pair.”

Yet another victory for Stephen Song makes him a highly attractive proposition in forthcoming events, with action already on sale at a markup of between just 1.03 and 1.10 in the $25,500 Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open High Roller and the $106,000 WSOP Paradise Triton Main Event.

Other than those events, however, Song plans to take a well-earned break.

“After this NAPT series, I’m going to take some time off until Florida WPT, and then I’ll just shoot over to The Bahamas. My family is in Florida, too, and then I’ll see them for Christmas right after. It kind of works out perfectly.”

On the kind of run Stephen Song is on, you won’t want to miss out on the value and you can snap up a piece of Song before he sells out by heading to his dedicated PokerStake staking page.

Headline photo by Matthew Berglund for PokerNews.