First-Ever WPT Prime Championship Winner Big-Stacked Deep in 2025 Edition
Stephen Song won the inaugural WPT Prime Championship at Wynn Las Vegas in 2022 for $712,650, beating out 5,430 entrants. The tournament is bigger this year — much bigger — and the event's first-ever champ is still standing, and with a big stack, as the final table nears.
Registration closed with 9,876 entrants in the field and $9,579,720 in the prize pool in the $1,100 no-limit hold'em tournament, a highlight of the WPT World Championship festival. There were 120 players remaining when Day 3 began on Friday, and the tournament is expected to play down to a final table before the day wraps.
Song entered the session with a slightly above-average stack. But just a few hours into Day 3, at the time of publishing, and he's tripled his start-of-day stack and finds himself among the chips leaders with under 60 players left.
Bigger Payday Coming for Song?
Song's high six-figure score three years ago was a career-best at the time. He could win more than that with a second-place finish this year ($775,000). First place, however, is set to pay $1,177,880, one of the largest cashes in a $1k buy-in ever, outside of the World Series of Poker (WSOP). The 2024 champion, Zak VanKeuren, won $1,162,350. Calvin Anderson, a five-time WSOP bracelet champion, was the biggest winner when he took it down in 2023 for $1,386,280, beating out 10,512 entrants.
Song, at the time of publishing, had over 50 big blinds. Aaron Johnson was the chip leader with around 110 big blinds. Will Givens, Esther Taylor, and Jeremy Becker were among the players still standing.
The final table will be reached when six players remain, but those finalists will take eight days off before returning to Wynn on Dec. 20 to play it down to a winner. All players who reach the final table will receive at least $250,000.
For Song, that would put his career live tournament cashes over $11.5 million, per The Hendon Mob. He's become one of the best tournament players in the world since he won the WPT Prime Championship in 2022, posting more than $8 million in cashes over the past three years.
Song has WSOP, World Series of Poker Circuit (WSOP), and PokerStars European Poker Tour (EPT) titles in the past couple of years. He's now in position to add two-time WPT Prime Championship winner to his resume.
*Images courtesy of the World Poker Tour.
