Three months ago, Josh Reichard and Jesse Lonis hadn’t played much poker against one another, at least not in any memorable way. As a matter of fact, until the WPT Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown Championship paired down to a single table at nine players left, Reichard and Lonis hadn’t played together for the entirety of the tournament.
They both traveled to Las Vegas at the start of the summer to play out their final table, each hoping to win their first WPT title, and Lonis and Reichard both reached the final three players at HyperX Arena. Reichard ultimately took Lonis out of the tournament in third place, and went on to defeat Landon Tice heads up to win $839,300 and what he described as his first major title.
Over a summer with hundreds of tournaments on the schedule, it wasn’t too surprising that they crossed paths throughout the 2024 World Series of Poker. Lonis even got a small measure of revenge when both of them made the top 100 in a $2,500 No Limit Hold’em bracelet event.
“We played a few weeks ago in a big tournament, and he actually tried to bluff me in a huge pot on a bubble,” said Lonis. “I remember I called him light on that one. So I feel pretty locked in on him, but he’s a very good player. He obviously just doesn’t make many mistakes, and he’s very aggressive at the right time. So he’s like me in a way, we both have a similar game.”
Reichard got the last laugh in that tournament as well, though, making the final table and finishing sixth. Lonis also made a final table run during the 2024 WSOP, taking fifth in a $50,000 High Roller.
All of that led up to the highlight of the summer, the WSOP Main Event. Both Lonis and Reichard built up chips over the first three days of the tournament, and with the money bubble looming heading into Day 4 on Wednesday, they each had over 100 big blinds and an advantageous position.
Then the table draw came out, and at Table 539 in the Horseshoe ballroom, Lonis drew Seat 2, and Reichard was directly to his left in Seat 3.
Lonis was immediately one of the most aggressive players in the room in attacking the bubble, running several major bluffs that were picked up by the PokerGO cameras. Lonis was even involved in one of the all-ins on the direct bubble during hand-for-hand. But once the bubble burst and the eliminations started flowing, both Reichard and Lonis were largely able to stay out of each others’ way as both continued to build up their stacks.
“We both had big stacks all day, we both are tough to play against,” said Reichard. “We don’t really want to be going to each other too hard, or that would be my assumption. With 500 people left in the tournament, we probably don’t want to go at each other too hard at this stage.
“95% of the time we were staying out of each other’s way,” said Reichard. “You know, there’s been some times where we’re both at hands and we’ve played against each other but we didn’t battle much at all.”
There was one very notable exception to the apparent détente that Lonis and Reichard settled into for most of Day 4. With Reichard in the small blind and Lonis on the button, they played down to the river with two big hands that didn’t see a ton of chips go in until the river of a board with three queens on it. Reichard check-raised to 825,000, and after some deep contemplation, Lonis ultimately decided to call and was right as his kings had Riechard’s ace-king trumped.
“If it was any other tournament, we probably would have gotten in a few different times for sure,” said Lonis. “But this one’s a marathon, and there’s so many other spots in the tournament at this stage. I think both of us had a mutual respect where we’re not going to really try to battle each other if we don’t have to.
“We had some big hands that collided, and that one hand,” said Lonis. “He’s just a very tough player, so obviously I wasn’t trying to go out of my way to play pots with him if I didn’t have to.”
Though they largely stayed out of each others’ way, in the pots they did play their now-growing history certainly played a factor in how they both navigated those hands – especially because both of them have a reputation for relentless aggression and pressure in big spots.
“Jesse and I both play like a style that’s not super robotic or solver-based, so prior hands definitely have an impact on what we’re doing against each other,” said Reichard.
As if their parallels of late didn’t run deep enough, after Reichard made another three-bet in a blind vs. button hand during the final three hands of the night, Lonis and Reichard had one more laugh when they started counting out their chips. They had each essentially tripled their stacks over the course of the day, and Reichard had ended the night with 2,540,000 to Lonis’ 2,520,000 – the difference of a single big blind – and they ended the night in 43rd and 44th, respectively with 464 players left in the field.
Poker tends to be a confluence of coincidences that crash into each other, and both Reichard and Lonis had a laugh at some of the absurdity of their collective experiences. While they didn’t draw each other for the start of play on Day 5, with the amount of chips they each hold and the way they’re playing it wouldn’t be in any way surprising to see them clash again before this tournament was over.
“With poker tournaments, it’s a small world and it feels like that happens more often than not in a weird way,” said Lonis. “Like astronomical things always seem to happen to me in tournaments. You never know who it’ll be – tomorrow I could be sitting next to Phil Ivey, so you just always have to be ready for whoever it is.”