ShareBin Weng, a 40-year-old Chinese-American poker player, has been crushing the live poker scene in 2023.
Born and raised in China, Weng moved to the United States when he was 18 and co-owns a small Chinese restaurant on Long Island.
After picking up the game around 2008, he grinded cash tables for almost a decade, but since switching to live tournaments in 2017, he hasn’t looked back and is now a feared opponent for any player.
Weng's breakthrough year began in Atlantic City at the Borgata casino in The Return: A Borgata Championship Event. A $5,300 buy-in and a $3 million guarantee made this bigger than any event he had cashed in before.
The prize pool eventually exceeded $5 million, and after a heads-up deal, Weng received exactly $1 million. This was obviously the best of starts to what would become an incredible year.
Only six weeks later, another victory came in a World Series of Poker Circuit event in Las Vegas. That was almost quarter of a million dollars more into the kitty.
Not much happened over the next couple of months, other than small cashes, but Weng was obviously keeping himself busy. And then he struck gold yet again.
A win in the $3,500 WPT Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown put $ 1,128,250 into Weng’s bankroll. This was really some run starting to come together and only a week later, he came close again in a WPT event in Choctaw with a fourth place finish for $143k.
No doubt trying to keep busy before the 2023 WSOP kicked off, Weng travelled down to The Lodge Card Club for the $25,000 High Roller. Second place behind Alex Foxen and just in front of Doug Polk gave him $145k more.
No less than seven cashes at the WSOP in the first month and a half were crowned by a trip over to the Wynn Las Vegas for the inaugural WPT EveryOne for One Drop which he ended up winning for $ 2,227,054.
That’s three seven-figure cashes in only six months. People were starting to take notice.
Weng's winning streak continued as he took down the WPT $25,000 High Roller at Wynn Las Vegas, outlasting 194 entries to win $ 958,279.
This victory was particularly meaningful for Weng as it was his first high roller win, a $25K buy-in event. This was guaranteed to garner a lot of attention.
Weng's rise in the tournament scene has been nothing short of remarkable. His aggressive and strategic play has earned him a place among the top poker players of 2023, with total career earnings exceeding $8.5 million.
His success in 2023 has not only established him as a formidable player but also as a rising star in the world of poker. We will definitely be seeing more of him next year.
