Ronnie Day Wins 2023 WSOP Event 4 Tournament of Champions for $200K

The Tournament of Champions is a million-dollar freeroll established to honor the top World Series of Poker winners from the past year. Ronnie Day qualified just weeks prior to the TOC by winning his first WSOP Circuit ring, but the pro player knew how to navigate the field of champions. He did just that to claim $200K for winning the only freeroll of the 2023 WSOP.

Day Enjoys Year of Firsts

Ronnie Day started 2023 with quite a few cashes and final tables on his Hendon Mob profile, but he had no wins. He played some events in Florida, Ohio, and Illinois. He won a tournament at the Queen City Bounty Series in Cincinnati in early May, final tabled another, and then headed to Elizabeth, Indiana, where the WSOP Circuit was taking place.

The Ohio native won the Monster Stack event and claimed a shiny Circuit ring for it. That ring came with a seat into a $1M freeroll – the famous Tournament of Champions. Day detoured directly to Las Vegas, played the TOC during the first days of the 2023 WSOP, and he won it.

Winner journey through tourney

The TOC started for Day as it did for so many others. He took his seat and finished the day with a stack that put him in 100^th chip position out of more than 200 players who also survived the day. Day 2 whittled the field down to just 31 players – all in the money – with Day holding a relatively small stack for 26^th place on that leaderboard.

Day wasn’t covered in the Day 3 action until he made the unofficial final table of ten players. He was the shortest stack but took some chips through Brent Gregory and doubled through Daniel Marx. He still struggled, though, and remained at the low end of the chip counts until play wrapped for the night.

A Comeback

The fourth day of play brought seven players back, Day with the second-shortest stack of chips.

Final table!!! short but 9 players away from the bracelet pic.twitter.com/ZJUNw2sgp1

— ronnie day (J.R.) (@scrondog) June 3, 2023

He started with a cautious tact until chopping an all-in pot with Patrick White and then knocking out Justin Hotte-McKinnon. Day then doubled through White and worked his way into a five-handed chip lead. He took more from White, busted Wissam Gahsham, and continued his climb, leaving his opponents in the dust. He then busted White to take 15.35M chips into heads-up play against the 6.9M of Gregory.

It was Gregory who started strong, but Day only let a few hands go by before getting more aggressive. It didn’t take long for Gregory to find a spot to push. He held 6-5 on a 5-A-4-5 board, but Day snap-called with J-5 and the better kicker. The river card changed nothing.

Day won his first WSOP bracelet.

Letting it Sink In

As Day posed with his winning J-5 hand, the chips, and his shiny new WSOP gold bracelet, he had few words for interviewers with PokerNews. “It’s so surreal right now,” he said. “It’s unbelievable. I don’t even know how to explain it.”

His post-tournament tweet expressed the same sentiment. He needed some time to let the reality of it all set in.

Feels like a surreal moment, thank all of you for the love and support. I am going to take some time to let it sink in, but those that messaged me I will get back with you tomorrow. Thank you all

— ronnie day (J.R.) (@scrondog) June 4, 2023