Ryan Riess Tells 888Ride He Wants to Win the WSOP Main Event Again
Cast your mind back to the 2013 World Series of Poker (WSOP) in Las Vegas. A fresh-faced Michigan native by the name of Ryan Riess left 6,351 opponents in his wake in the $10,000 Main Event as he became poker's world champion and received a life-changing $8,361,570 score. Although Riess was a relative unknown back then, he's since blossomed into one of live poker's most respected grinders, racking up an additional $8 million in cashes, including a World Poker Tour (WPT) title.
Fast-forward to the 2025 WSOP, and David Tuchman picked up the 2013 Main Event champ in his car and chatted with him during 888poker's enlightening 888Ride segment.
When Riess won the Main Event, he was fresh out of college and had just started playing poker full-time. Today, he's an accomplished poker player and a father in his 30s.
"So much has changed. Back then, I had graduated from college in December 2012, so six months before the World Series of Poker (WSOP) started. So to go from being a college kid to playing poker full-time and then winning the Main Event during my first WSOP is pretty crazy to think back on it, to be honest."
Riess told Tuchman that, after triumphing in the 2013 WSOP Main Event, he thought poker was going to be easy and believed he would quickly win four more bracelets. That hasn't happened yet, which Riess puts down to naivety at the start of his career.
"I was very naive, too. But when you win a lot and are very successful at your first WSOP, you kind of have to be naive. Because all you know is you played it once, you won a bunch, and think that's easy, I should do it all the time, but it's not quite that easy!"
During his 2013 post-victory interviews, Riess famously declared, "I just think I'm the best player in the world." Obviously, despite becoming our game's world champion, he wasn't, and Tuchman pulled him up on this statement.
"I think it's really important to have that mentality. Draymond Green (an NBA star), who also went to Michigan State, had a good interview about having that mentality because he once said he's the best defender in the world in basketball. And an interviewer asked what gives you the confidence to say that? He basically said that you have to have the mentality that you're the best or else you've already lost."
"In poker, if you sit at a table and believe that the other people are better than you, you probably shouldn't even sit down. You have to have the mentality that you're the best or at least that you can compete with them on that level. If you sit down and think that these people are all better than me, I'm not going to defend my big blind against him because he's too good, you shouldn't even be playing."
Riess headed into the 2013 WSOP Main Event fifth in chips, placing him in the middle of the pack. Tuchman asked the bracelet winner what is strategy was. Was it to ladder up the payouts or go all out for the win?
"For me, it was just to take one hand at a time and play each hand the best I could. I honestly wasn't looking at payouts that much. I mean, back then, ICM wasn't as much of a thing as it is now; there weren't solvers or anything. I really just wanted to win."
Although supremely confident in his ability, the then-young Riess admitted that he was scared as the biggest final table of his life approached.
"The morning of the final table, my emotions brought me to tears because it was more of like a nervousness because this is what every poker player wants. I started to get scared because I didn't want anything to go the wrong way. Luckily, when the final table started, I busted my friend Mark Newhouse with ace-king against nines, and that kind of calmed the nerves."
Riess admitted that things could have gone differently had he lost that coin flip because it would have left him nursing the shortest stack. He showed his humble side, stating," I was very happy to run good. I think most people, if they got my card distribution at the final table, would have won; I mean, I won all the flips!"
Toward the latter stages of the 18-minute interview, Tuchman and Riess discuss the different approaches Riess takes when playing lower-stakes tournaments or high rollers. Riess revealed his favourite stake is $10,000 as it has a balance of good regulars and recreational players taking shots. Additionally, he told Tuchman that he prefers to keep a large percentage of himself whenever he plays.
"It's important when playing poker to take the stakes out of it; it's a lot easier said than done, especially when you're playing for high stakes. At the end of the day, it's still poker. The best players distance themselves from the amount of money they're playing for, and they just try to make the best decisions on every street."
"In the big buy-ins, you play more of a GTO approach because you're playing against other players who are all kind of trying to play perfect. Where in the smaller buy-ins, you're playing against recreational players, and you can play very exploitively because you don't have to be balanced against them. If you have a good hand, bet big; if you have a weak hand, bet small; it's kind of as simple as that in a way."
Before Tuchman dropped off Riess at the Horseshoe and Paris Las Vegas, he posed Riess a tough question. Riess is a massive Detroit Lions fan and was asked, if the money was taken away, would Riess rather win the Main Event again or see his beloved Lions win the Super Bowl? Watch the video to find out Riess' answer!
