Unknown Poker Player in Town for Father's Day Randomly Enters WSOP $250K

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Jun 18, 2023 3 min read Last updated Jun 19, 2023

There are thousands of casual poker fans who take a stab at World Series of Poker (WSOP) events each year, some even just randomly stumble in and think, "Wow, this looks like fun," so they ante up. Most of the time, those players enter $1,500 and below buy-in tournaments.

And then there is Dustin Bailey, who, more or less, decided to just randomly enter Event #40: $250,000 Super High Roller, the most expensive bracelet event of the summer. Not only was the unknown poker player spending enough to buy a condo in most Las Vegas neighborhoods to compete in just one poker tournament, he chose an event that featured some of the game's best, such as Phil Ivey and Alex Foxen.

On Day 1, Bailey not only stepped into the arena against a field of 69 poker superstars, he bagged the chip lead. Heading into Day 2, PokerNews caught up with the "unknown" to find out his story and why he entered the tournament in the first place.

"I Don't Really Follow Poker"

Prior to speaking with Bailey, who said he's in the "oil and gas" business mostly and also has some side investments, we did a bit of research on him to see if we could find some info on his poker background. Here's what we found — nothing. He's the ultimate unknown poker player and there's a reason for that.

"To be honest, I really don't follow (poker) that much, sorry," Bailey said with a laugh.

There are no Hendon Mob results for Bailey and, according to the high roller who lives in Dallas, Texas, he hasn't played much poker at all.

"When I was in college, I enjoyed playing some cash games back home in Dallas, but other than that, not much poker at all," Bailey explained.

Bailey, who said he wasn't familiar with the stars he was facing in the Super High Roller — not even Ivey or Phil Hellmuth — told us how he ended up playing in the first place.

"I don't know if there's a good story," he said. "I just like to gamble and I don't have the patience to sit through a $10,000 tournament for seven or eight days, so I talked my wife and kids into coming out with me (to Las Vegas) and letting me play in this one for Father's Day."

The no longer anonymous player who was stacking chips left and right during Friday's Day 1 session wasn't even planning to come out to Las Vegas until last week. With Sunday being Father's Day, he decided it would be fun to travel out to Sin City with his family, have a nice relaxing weekend, and put down a $250,000 wager on himself beating out a brutally tough field of poker giants.

"I was like, well, it's the biggest tournament that they have so I thought I'd try it," he continued.

Bailey admitted he didn't expect to have so much success on Day 1 because "I figured I was playing all the sharks."

Those sharks would end up taking all of his chips on Day 2, however. He busted in 19th place and only the top 11 are paid (first place will earn $5,293,556), but at least he has an interesting story to tell about his experience. A very expensive story.

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