Jeremy Ausmus Crowned 2022 PokerGO Cup Champion

Jeremy Ausmus is the 2022 PokerGO Cup champion. Ausmus performed incredibly over the course of the eight-event series, cashing four times for $824,500 which includes one win and four top-three finishes. For topping the series leaderboard, Ausmus earned the $50,000 championship bonus.

“It’s great,” Ausmus said. “It was a big sweat to win this. Everyone coming into the final table could’ve won it and I barely eeked it out.”

Ausmus got started on his quest towards winning the 2022 PokerGO Cup with a second-place finish in Event #3: $10,000 No-Limit Hold’em. He finished second to Jake Daniels and took home $144,000 and 144 points. Immediately after that result, Ausmus won Event #4: $15,000 No-Limit Hold’em for $263,250 and 263 points, topping Brock Wilson in that tournament. Then, it was a pair of third-place finishes for Ausmus. First, he got third in Event #7: $25,000 No-Limit Hold’em for $161,250 and 97 points. Then, he got third in Event #8: $50,000 No-Limit Hold’em for $256,000 and 154 points.

Coming into the final table of Event #8, Ausmus had the points lead in the series, but he didn’t have the 2022 PokerGO Cup locked up. In fact, all four of his opponents could still win.

“I was the shortest stack, but then Schulman couldn’t win anymore after Negreanu busted, so as long as I kept laddering I was more likely to get the win,” Ausmus said of his mindset entering and to start the final table. “Then Perry had to win heads up for me and he had a huge chip lead.”

Ausmus worked his way to a third-place finish in Event #8, which meant that only Wilson could take the 2022 PokerGO Cup out of his hands. Wilson had to defeat Sean Perry in heads-up play, but he was faced with one-seventh of the chips to start. It didn’t take long for Perry to finish off Wilson, doing so when his pocket jacks held against Wilson’s king-queen. The final hand secured a $640,000 victory for Perry while simultaneously winning the 2022 PokerGO Cup for Ausmus.

“I ran so ridiculously the last six tournaments,” Ausmus said. “I finished in the top eight six tournaments in a row here. I was just deep in Florida, and even in December I was final tabling stuff, so I’m definitely running really, really good. It’s maybe the best I’ve ever run in the past couple of months, just deep in everything I play. It’s pretty cool.”

Along with all of the money he won from the tournament finishes, which amounts to $824,500, Ausmus picked up the $50,000 championship bonus that came with being crowned the 2022 PokerGO Cup champion.

“It’s cool, it’s awesome,” Ausmus said of how winning a player-of-the-series title compares to winning a single tournament. “I was telling someone earlier that I’ve gotten crushed in here. In the U.S. Poker Open and Poker Masters, I was home for dinner every night and I didn’t realize what it was like to have any points or anything. Then I was part of the big race and saw how involved everyone was and how people are into it, and I didn’t get that before. It’s cool. It’s a lot of fun. The extra $50K that’s given is awesome. It’s just really cool.”

Ausmus’ 2022 PokerGO Cup Results

Ausmus’ latest success has pushed him to more than $11,400,000 in career live tournament earnings. He closed out 2021 strong and continues to ride that momentum into 2022. Ausmus was the first gold bracelet winner at the 2021 World Series of Poker, for what was at the time his second gold bracelet, and then he later won the 2021 WSOP $50,000 Pot-Limit Omaha event for $1,188,918, denying Phil Hellmuth another piece of WSOP jewelry. Right before hitting the PokerGO Cup felt at the PokerGO Studio in Las Vegas, Ausmus finished seventh in the WPT Lucky Hearts Poker Open for $160,095.

“When I was coming up and getting into poker, didn’t even exist,” Ausmus said of competing in high rollers. “I’ve never really been the guy who’s been like, ‘I’m going to play the highest stakes and beat the best players.’ I’ve never really been like that until more recently, like the last year or two. I’ve just worked hard and feel like I can compete at the higher levels now. I still have work to do, but it never was my goal. I’ve never been the super, super competitive guy, just pretty competitive. I just want to make a living doing something I like to do and now I’m able to play the higher stuff.”

To get to this level, Ausmus pointed to the hard work he’s put in off the felt. Studying and improving off the felt is something many of the players that frequent PokerGO Tour (PGT) events say is the key to success. For Ausmus, he said he works harder when he’s losing and that it helps him come out as a better player on the other side of a bad run. Then, when things click, you get results like we’ve seen from him at the 2022 PokerGO Cup.

“It’s awesome,” Ausmus said of his run. “If you’re not running good when you’re all in, you can work as hard as you want and you’ll just keep losing. But honestly, for me anyway, I work way harder when I’m losing. I guess I’m a little bit results-oriented. I know why I’m losing, I can see it, but I work that much harder. So I kind of embrace losing because overall that’s what has got me to where I’m at and got me better and better every time. Every losing spell I’ve gone through in the last 17 years, I come out a much better player.”

Although Ausmus isn’t much of a traveling poker player these days, there are plenty of events at in Las Vegas that he’ll be competing in. Coming up in March is the 2022 U.S. Poker Open and that’s something Ausmus is eyeing on the schedule.

“I love the U.S. Poker Open, and that’s coming up in a month,” Ausmus said. “I love the Poker Masters. I live here. It’s easy to come down here. This is the best place to play that there is; it’s comfortable, it’s nice, there’s a lot of camaraderie in here. It’s a small group and so many people know each other, just people from all different areas in the world and walks of life, but it’s a lot of fun. I love playing here. I don’t travel a ton, so it’s perfect.”

With 658 points on the PGT leaderboard, the 2022 PokerGO Cup champion sits third behind Nick Petrangelo and Sean Perry. Last season, Ausmus finished 21st on the PGT leaderboard with 1,405 points. With nearly half of that amount already earned before February is half over, Ausmus is off to a great start to his 2022 campaign and we’ll see how he progresses throughout the season.