Jacob Bazeley

This Ohio-born MTT specialist actually found poker through basketball whilst playing for his collegiate team at Christian Brothers University. However, it wasn’t until a few years later that Jacob actually pursued the game as a profession. Unlike many players of his generation, he finished his academic studies and even went to graduate school whilst working as a graduate assistant. Always playing poker on the side, he ended up taking a shot at it full-time after being done with graduate school and giving himself a year to try and make it as a professional card player. Bazeley had a six-figure year and has never looked back since.

Less than two years into his pro career, Jacob achieved some impressive results playing online that secured him a decent bankroll to dive into the live tournament circuit. In 2008, he finished fifth in the FTOPS Main Event on Full Tilt (as ‘bazeman’) which earned him $103,194.

The Cincinnati native took his skills that he’d developed in the online world and began testing them on the live circuit in 2008. Since then, Jacob has picked up over $3,700,000 in MTT earnings in this realm thanks to a collection of six-figure scores. His largest cash ever was in 2015 when he won the $3,500 SHRPO No Limit Hold’em Main Event for a top prize that exceeded half-a-million dollars. Among the in-the-money finishers were poker legends Jason Mercier and Phil Laak along with German talent Marvin Rettenmaier – by no means an easy field to navigate through.

Though Bazeley has not been able to pick up a major WPT title, his successes in this circuit have bagged him around $1,000,000. These are largely as a result of two major scores in 2014 and 2015, when he finished fourth at the $3,500 Championship Event in Hollywood for upwards of $370,000 and won a whopping $461,470 the following year for his third-place run at the $7,500 WPT Main Event in San Jose.

Jacob has been unfortunate to not have booked a WSOP win as of yet. Despite making multiple final tables including a runner-up finish in 2012 at the $1,500 No Limit Hold’em event, he is yet to claim that all-important bracelet. He has even had a couple of deep runs at the historic $10,000 Main Event, including a 25th place finish in 2017 that earned him $263,532.

With a combined total of more than $7,000,000 in MTT earnings spread between his online and live scores, Bazeley might just be one of the most successful poker players to have never won the WSOP gold. It should only be a matter of time.