Rampage’s Bracelet Run Sparks a Kessler Feud
Yau offered a $100/$200-or-higher, 100,000-hand heads-up match after his WSOP Online win, but Kessler said he only wanted mixed games.
After Ethan “Rampage” Yau tweeted that he was coming off a second WSOP bracelet and liked his chances, a heads-up challenge to Allen Kessler quickly slid into insults. Yau offered a $100/$200-or-higher no-limit hold’em match for 100,000 hands, while Kessler said he was not interested in NLH and only wanted mixed games.
Yau opened by calling Kessler “a cancer to this industry” and tying the challenge to his recent bracelet win. PokerNews reported that he also took a harsher personal shot at Kessler, saying he was a “whiny ass fart” who has “no backbone when push comes to shove.”
Kessler answered that Yau was “drawing dead” against “a ton of notable players.” He said he would be willing to play only if the challenge involved mixed games, and offered to line up several players who would accept the match.
Yau made clear he was not interested in the players Kessler suggested. He also said he was “just doing it for promotion,” which made the whole exchange look more like trash talk than a real booking.
The feud was set against Yau’s June victory in WSOP Online – Hybrid #16: $5K Championship, where he beat Adrian Mateos heads-up for $228,825. That event drew 226 entries and generated a $1.13 million prize pool, with the final table finishing live in the Paris Ballroom in Las Vegas after starting online.
Mateos had been 6-0 in WSOP bracelet heads-up matches with a bracelet on the line before losing to Yau. He had also won the $250,000 Super High Roller earlier in the series.
Yau’s bracelet run came after a huge livestream cash-game heater. PokerNews said he was on a seven-figure upswing, and Card Player reported more than $1.3 million in profits across three sessions, including a $676,000 pot against Michael “Texas Mike” Moncek.
Card Player also said Yau had more than half a million followers across Instagram and YouTube and over $4.9 million in recorded tournament earnings. The bracelet was his third-largest payday, behind a $894,240 score in a $25,000 high roller at the 2022 World Poker Tour World Championship and a $230,379 win in the 2021 MSPT Venetian main event.
Kessler’s resistance to the NLH challenge fit his own poker lane. He created The Chainsaw Mixed Series of Poker, and PokerNews said most of that series is non-hold’em, with some NLH events also on the schedule.
