As the field was trimmed down towards Day 3 of the WPT Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown, some of the most experienced players and heaviest hitters fell by the wayside. By the time it got down to just 16 players, only a single WPT Champions Club member remained – Dylan Linde.
He’ll be one of the shorter stacks when play resumes on Tuesday, but he’s likely to be a tough out as one of the most versatile active tournament players going today, tearing it up in both big buy-in events and big fields alike. In addition to his $1.6 million WPT Five Diamond World Poker Classic win, Linde’s had an active presence all over the world in high roller events. Just a month ago, he was playing Triton Super High Roller Series events in Jeju, South Korea, racking up four cashes, and then Linde rolled onto the WPT Voyage, where he won a $10,000 High Roller.
Linde’s proved he has the patience to wade through bigger fields with small buy-ins, too. He won a $1,675 WSOP Circuit Main Event in Hammond, Indiana back in October 2016, and showed off his non-Hold’em skills when he captured a WSOP bracelet in 2021 in a $1,500 Triple Omaha Hi-Lo event.
Variety is one of the key elements Linde looks at while traversing the globe in search of his next poker destination, and the festivals at Seminole Hard Rock Casino & Hotel Hollywood cater to a number of Linde’s different poker aspirations.
“I think what keeps me coming back to Seminole all the time is they have both high rollers and great kind of like bigger fields at mid-stakes and with their main events,” said Linde. “It’s the perfect mixture, I think, between those two things.”
Even for someone like Linde, who has enjoyed poker success in a variety of different contexts, making the mental switch from duking it out with deeply experienced and/or super wealthy adversaries in high rollers to the grind of a WPT Championship event against a much wider variety of player types can be a tough task.
But it’s one that he welcomes entirely.
“I find like transitioning into the bigger field tournaments to be exceptionally challenging, which I love,” said Linde. “I tend to play both the low-stakes or mid stakes events, and the high stakes. I enjoy the mental flexibility difference between the two.”
The dynamic change at the table goes beyond the hands being played. The environment in a PokerGO Studio tournament, with a big five-figure buy-in and players who are largely seeing the same faces every day in one- and two-day events, ironically tends to lend itself to a looser and more social environment despite the big dollar amounts.
When it’s three days into a field with thousands of players, who have been facing down an ever-changing environment and payouts hundreds of times the size of the buy-in – perhaps for the first time in their careers – the tension tends to build differently.
Linde feels as though he’s able to strike the right balance in both scenarios, and his results generally back that up.
“For me, table presence means kind of just having fun playing poker, and I really think that regardless of what the stakes are, and what I’m playing like, I think I can play seriously, yet still show kindness and have fun with people at the table in a way that doesn’t hinder me in any way,” said Linde. “I know some people like building a persona as part of their thing, but for me, I can play fierce and still smile and laugh with the guy next to me.”
Linde will officially push past $8 million in live earnings on his Hendon Mob profile no matter where he finishes in this tournament. And as the 2024 WPT Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown entered a critical stage of the tournament, Linde has a depth of experience to tap into that few of the other remaining players in the field do.
He’s spent time under the brightest lights that poker has to offer, both on the WPT and elsewhere, and Linde’s got the results to prove that he has the ability to hold up against that level of scrutiny. The moment will not be too big, and in the face of the worst that variance might have to offer Linde deep in this tournament, he’s confident that he’ll be able to keep his wits about him.
“Having won a large field main event with WPT gives me an advantage, just in the experience and being able to handle the ups and downs of it,” said Linde. “As far as relative stakes, I don’t think it matters as much [between this and a high roller], because the gravitas of the situation is always important. For me, it’s more the fact that I’ve just played so much and I’ve been in a lot of spots and I understand that if bad luck happens, it happens. When good luck happens, I’m grateful. I don’t get too wrapped up in one hand or whatever happens.”