There are only two Razz-specific events on the World Series of Poker calendar each year. The best seem to rise to the top of the results, with 11 players making multiple Razz final tables since 2017 – players like Phil Hellmuth, Benny Glaser, and Calvin Anderson, to name a few.
But coming into 2023, only one of those 11 had three final table appearances – David ‘ODB’ Baker. In 2017, Baker pulled off a Razz double with a second-place finish in the $1,500 event and third in the $10,000 Championship. He returned to the $1,500 final table in 2021, where he finished fifth.
The runner-up finish in 2017, to Jason Gola, was a particularly tough close call. During a grueling six-hour heads-up match, Baker had Gola down to less than a single big bet at 60K/120K limits – a 30-to-1 advantage. But Gola fought all the way back, and despite all the final table appearances, that tournament stayed with Baker for a while.
“He came back, and that was really the most disappointed I had [ever] been – not from a money perspective, just from a not winning perspective,” Baker said. “And that one really ate me up.”
Turns out, Baker’s fourth Razz final table would be the right one. He won the 2023 $1,500 Razz event for $152,991, coincidentally coming back from a desperately short stack along the way to defeat Justin Liberto.
“It really is a lot of redemption, to come back in the exact event that, you know, I felt like [Gola] kind of stole from me, even though he earned it – he played great and made a great comeback,” Baker said. “I mean, I got short. I’ve been around this a long time, and I know in these limit events that sometimes you just need to win that one pot. Sometimes I think it just kind of gets away from you sometimes where it seems insurmountable.
“All you have to do is just win that pot and stay alive, until you win that important pot that gets you to that next plateau and you can start building from there. And so, you know, I never lost hope.”
As his wife, his mother, and a gathering of his friends from the poker world cheered him on, Baker put on a comeback that earned him a third career WSOP bracelet. He did so in a game he has excelled at in the limited opportunities on offer each year. So, with a first, a second, a thhird, and a fifth to his credit over the last seven years, where does he rank himself against the best in this particular discipline?
“I’m really not sure,” Baker said. “You could sit here and ask me the equities of certain spots, and I don’t know them as well as a lot of other people. But I just have a really good feel for the game, and I have a good feel for my opponents. And I mean, I think one of my biggest poker skills is just the ability to zig and zag; sometimes I need to play really tight, and sometimes I need to play really aggressive. I am pretty good at tailor-making my style for my opponents or my table. I think that’s kind of my key in general in poker, because I’m definitely not the most technically sound player, but I have a lot of f—ing heart and an ability to read the situations and people.”
It’s been a good start to the 2023 WSOP for Baker, who is also a WPT Champions Club member after winning the 2019 LA Poker Classic. Baker’s win early Monday morning was his second final table appearance of the summer thus far, after finishing eighth in the inaugural $1,500 Badugi event, and with the win, he shot up into the top five of the 2023 WSOP Player of the Year race in the early going.
Even with the opportunity to come back and win a bracelet at hand, Baker briefly considered multi-tabling another event while four-handed in the Razz tournament because he was short-stacked and was already thinking of setting up another run.
“I absolutely love this stuff,” Baker said. “I mean, I tried to get [us] to not go on dinner break because I was short, and I wanted a chance to either run it back up or bust in time to go late register the 8 Game. I even considered on dinner break going and dropping the stack there and playing for an hour and try to build a stack to come back to, just in case I busted early. But ultimately, I just decided that it’s a different room and it’s far away, so let’s just eat and spend time with my wife and my mom.”
It was an effective strategy if the results are enough of an indicator. There’s a good chance Baker will be a fixture in every non-Hold’em event from now to the end of the Series as well, given the plentiful opportunities. It’s because of his proficiency in those games, of course, and the head-start he has on most of the field in the POY standings. But it also comes down to pure enjoyment – the kind that was clearly present on Baker’s face in the moments after his victory.
“I think if you if you polled all the poker players to put together a list of who loves it more, I think I’d probably be in the top 10 list,” said Baker. “I love this stuff. I live for this. And yeah, it means a lot.”