They say there’s no right way to play pocket jacks.
And even when you do, the consensus “most hated hand in poker” seems to find a way to do you in. That was the case for WPT Ambassador Brad Owen on Monday afternoon who was in the midst of a deep run at the livestreamed feature table in the $10,400 WPT World Championship for a second year in a row.
It must have looked like a pretty good spot for Owen. After a min-raise open from Chris Sparks in the cutoff with 
, Stanislav Barshak put in a three-bet holding the 
. That’s when Owen looked down at “pocket jiggities”, as he would say. With just 25 big blinds in his stack, Owen didn’t take long before he four-bet moved all in for 2.1 million.
The shove might have gotten through, except Ankit Ahula picked up 
in the big blind. You can guess what happened next. Being one of the biggest stacks at the table, Ahuja knew what to do. He asked for a count, took a moment, and then put in the five-bet isolation shove which folded out both Sparks and Barshak.
“It’s such a slam dunk shove for Brad there to pick up all those extra chips and just waking up with a very strong hand and then, unfortunately, the big blind just waking up with it here,” said commentator Ashley Frank.
With only one jack left in the deck, it was a low-drama run out of 
sending Owen to the rail in 88th place which was good for $53,500.
For being known as a prolific cash game player on his vlogs, Owen has had a very nice year in the tournament streets. After his 35th-place finish in last year’s WPT World Championship at Wynn Las Vegas for $99,600, Owen went on to rack up just over $375,000 in earnings in 2023.
Aside from the above, his year is highlighted by his fourth-place finish in the WPT Gardens Poker Championship for a career-high $125,000 and also his third-place finish in the WPT World Championship $10,100 festival prelim for $107,800.