Former Professional StarCraft Player Jinho Hong Wins Poker Hall of Fame Bounty

After scoring his best-ever live cash of $696,011 a mere three weeks ago, Jinho Hong has now won his first bracelet and an additional $276,067 by coming out victorious in the 2022 World Series of Poker (WSOP) Event #76: $1,979 Poker Hall of Fame Bounty. He defeated Punnat Punsri heads-up in a field consisting of 865 entries. The total prize pool of this event was $1,495,363 with 130 players getting paid in the end.

Hong, also better known as “YellOw” in the StarCraft scene, was visibly touched by the win and his rail. After taking the usual winner shots, his rail flooded the feature table area for the group picture and then spent some time taking selfies while he proudly showed off his bracelet.

“For now I’m so happy, my head is empty, very nervous but I am just so grateful that I’ve won a bracelet,” was his response right after winning. “The win at the Wynn Summer Classic was a bigger cash but for me, the bracelet is a lot more meaningful to me and hopefully in the future, a lot more Koreans keep on trying to get the bracelet and hopefully our country grows.”

When asked about his connection to Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier he indicated that they discuss hands and strategy sometimes. He also added this: “The foreign scene is a lot better than the Asian scene, especially the Korean one. Korean players are still slightly left behind due to the language barrier and the skill level but it’s good that I finally achieved something for Koreans.”

Event #76: $1,979 Poker Hall of Fame Bounty Final Table Results

Fast-Paced Action

Hong came into the day as the chip leader with Punsri following him hot on his heels. “It was good that I was the chip leader, but Punsri was sitting directly to my left, it was pretty tough to deal with that, but it was what it was,” he reflected back on the start of the day.

Hong increased his chip lead to having almost twice as much as Punsri when he knocked out both Yuri Dzivielevski and George Rotariu in the second hand of the day. Dzivielevski had shoved with pocket fives and Rotariu put his tournament life at risk while holding ace-jack. Hong held the ace-queen and while both Rotariu and Hong flopped top two pair, Hong held with the queen-kicker to get the final table down to five players.

Pavel Spirins was short with four big blinds and managed to double up through Punsri but then lost all those chips to Daniel Weinman with ace-nine versus king-queen of diamonds. Spirins turned the straight draw and hit it on the river but Weinman also hit his flush to knock out the Latvian player in fifth place.

But Weinman failed to hold on to those chips as he had to surrender them to Punsri when his ace-nine failed to connect on the deuce-five-king-jack-seven board while Punsri hit a pair of jacks on the turn with the queen-jack in his hand. Weinman earned 419 points for the WSOP Player of the Year leaderboard, not quite enough to overtake Daniel Zack, who also came over for a bit to check out the action.

A few moments later, Jakob Miegel fell in third place when his pocket tens couldn’t beat the kings of Punsri to send the young German to the payout desk for his biggest life-time cash while Punsri increased his narrow chip lead over Hong.

After a short break, heads-up play commenced and the action slowed down a bit as small pots went back and forth but things turned around when Hong doubled up when all the chips went in for them on the eight-queen-six-deuce board. They had both flopped top pair but Hong had an ace for the kicker to leave Punsri behind with four big blinds.

Punsri doubled up once but the curtains fell for him when he shoved 11 big blinds in with pocket rockets and saw them get cracked by Hong’s ace-four when the board gave him a backdoor flush.