Brock Wilson: ‘I Like Making Decisions Under Pressure’

Brock Wilson found his calling early. It was 2008, and the poker boom had somehow reached his middle school in New York. There was a brief phase where he was fascinated by basketball, followed by guitar lessons, skateboarding, hockey games, and the baseball team, but nothing stuck like poker.

“I kind of never shifted away from it,” Wilson said. “It’s just remained and It’s only gotten stronger. I had a natural ability for it. I had a pretty good feel for the game. I was always okay at math and reasonably intuitive. I had okay emotional intelligence. It was kind of combining those two things. I had a very good feel for how often people will have certain hands, who is more emotionally tied to different sorts of spots, who it pains to get bluffed, who it pains to stack off without a really good hand.”

The teenager was tearing through poker strategy books and even managed to get an online poker account. (Now at 30 years old, the statute of limitations on underage gambling has likely passed.) He had no problem beating the other kids in his high school, cash-strapped students who would end up handing Wilson their money by the end of most home games.

“A lot of times, kids would come with $20 and would have to try and make it last the whole night,” he recalled. “It’s easy to win when the guy doesn’t exactly want to bust and have nothing to do for the rest of the night. It was pretty easy just to bet, bet, jam.”

Despite the low stakes, Wilson amassed some tidy winnings, saving about $10,000 by the end of his high school run.

“It definitely made poker a lot of fun,” he says. “When you always win, you’re going to enjoy the game a lot. It was very nice to have the group of friends that I played with because nobody took it as seriously as I did.”

On The Rise

While he doesn’t win every time anymore, Wilson has certainly shined during his adult poker career, having amassed more than $11 million in live tournament winnings.

He broke through in 2018 with a WSOP Circuit ring at Foxwoods for $65,250. In 2019, another Circuit ring came his way, and he secured a life-changing cash in the Bahamas, taking second in the $25,000 partypoker MILLIONS high roller for $619,536.

A month later, a runner-up showing in a $25,000 high roller at the Hard Rock in South Florida brought him another $301,215. That same month he grabbed a win in a $10,000 tournament at the Bicycle Casino in Los Angeles for $110,020.

In December of 2020 he came out on top in a $10,000 event at Wynn for $124,200 and grabbed another pair of runner-up scores at the PokerGO studio in February and March 2021 for a total of $356,000. In April, a fourth-place finish in a $25,500 high roller event yielded $286,520 and he won a PGT event that September for $189,800.

In September 2022, Wilson took third at Hard Rock Tampa in the World Poker Tour main event for $411,678, and less than six months later there was another high roller final table in the Bahamas worth $261,700.

But his best year on tour came in 2024, highlighted by a victory in a $25,000 WPT Alpha8 at the Wynn for $571,400 followed by another in a $2,200 tournament at the property just two weeks later for $626,429. Unlike the high rollers that Wilson has gravitated towards in recent years, that tournament featured more than 1,900 entries and is the biggest bullet point on his poker record.

“I’ve played many years of these large-field tournaments and I just had never broken through,” he admitted. “It was rewarding because I felt like I played really well. I had a strategy that I adapted to different players. It felt good that it all came together. That’s very hard to replicate. I obviously had more action than I would a larger buy-in. Monetarily, it was my biggest win by far to date. But it felt really good to play against a wide variety of opponents at all ages, all experience levels, and come out on top. I made a few big folds and then a few big calls, and I felt like I zigged and zagged when I needed to.”

Staying Disciplined

Originally from Westchester County in New York, Wilson now divides his time between Pennsylvania and Las Vegas. Although he caught the poker bug early, Wilson still stayed in school, graduating from Fordham University with a degree in finance. It’s that discipline that keeps him in the game, even though he has been guilty of taking some big shots over the years.

“I put down $10,000 to play the PCA main event thinking, ‘Alright, I have $15,000 to my name… but I’m going to win a million dollars,’” he recalled. “That never happened. I busted on day 2 and was devastated. Today I’m not quite the risk taker I was then. I would never do something like that. But when you’re young, you should be taking risks. That’s what everybody always said.”

“If you’re a tournament player, you sure as hell shouldn’t be playing paycheck to paycheck,” he went on to explain. “You’d better be well rolled or backed. Otherwise, you’re going to have a lot of periods of not having enough money to live. You have these thoughts in the back of your head because that’s the scary thing about poker. When you win a tournament, you don’t know how lucky you got or how much of it was due to skill. There’s a constant mental battle of trying to prove to yourself that you’re good enough.”

But while imposter syndrome is hard to ignore and doubt can creep in, Wilson remains drawn to the game.

“I don’t really love the gambling side of it, to be honest,” he admitted. “I don’t get a super rush from getting big money in and see who’s going to win. Other gambling games never appealed to me – I don’t really love craps or roulette or just flipping for big, massive money. So, it’s not really the gambling side of it, it’s more about the competition.”

“I like tournament poker specifically because there is a clear winner and loser. There are clear standings of who got what place. I like the psychology and math of poker. I enjoy the probability, having to make decisions under pressure. When it was clutch time, I could usually perform pretty well. Some of my friends were better at certain aspects of sports than me, but when crunch time came, I was usually pretty good at playing at my best.”

The Difference Between High Rollers And The Rest Of Us

Since becoming more serious about poker, Wilson has seen his game change. He was super aggressive in those early games, but faced better competition in college, including a pre-bracelet Jonathan Dokler, who was also ultra-aggressive and changed Wilson’s mindset.

“I didn’t know how to deal with it,” Wilson says. “That forced me to go online and learn a little more on how to really play well and not just blindly put money into the pot. When I turned 21, I became a little more prone to folding because live cash is more of a game of playing solid and just getting value. So that made me a little bit nittier In some ways.”

More GTO (game theory optimal) studying followed, including solvers. While some pros might see it as homework, Wilson enjoys the studying aspects that come with the game for today’s poker pros. He’s become friends with some other top crushers in the game such as Stephen Song, Justin Saliba, Adam Hendrix, Michael Rossitto, David Coleman, and Chris Brewer, but Wilson loves talking about poker with anyone and believes there’s always something to learn, even from those who may have different views.

But Wilson attributes his success to time put in at the tables, rather than some innate ability. Those who put in the hours will beat a natural card sense in the long run.

“Even for somebody who studies using solvers… their first few years it would be better to just put their phone down and watch and see the different stuff that people turn up with,” he explained. “What really separates a lot of the best players at the high level are that they have a lot of experience and they’re constantly learning from their mistakes. There’s nothing that special, in my opinion, that a lot of these guys are doing. It’s not some special strategy that they have that no one else does at the lower buy-in levels. It’s more that they’re always catering their strategy specifically to other players. It’s a constant game of observation, and then using those observations to maybe plug into a solver.”

“Nobody is doing anything that is not learnable. High rollers aren’t rocket science. There’s just a lot of observation and trial and error. What a lot of the guys have is that they play a lot online, they talk a lot about different ideas. They’re always keeping an open mind. I think an open mind is the biggest thing. No one has some perfect strategy that they’re blindly implementing against all opponents.”

Poker Power Couple

While the Foxens have gotten a lot of attention on the high roller circuit, a new poker power couple has emerged in Wilson and fellow tournament pro Cherish Andrews. Andrews has racked up more than $3.5 million in cashes in recent years and is already approaching the top 10 of the women’s all-time money list.

In April, Andrews took down the $25,000 high roller at the Hard Rock Poker Showdown for $408,265. The guy who finished third? That was Wilson, who settled for $313,410. (Andrews reported that he refused to sit on her lap for the winner photo!)

The two met in 2021 at Stoney’s, an off-Strip country bar in Las Vegas often frequented by poker pros. Wilson fell pretty quick, and they’ve been together ever since.

“We’ve both sort of evolved in poker over this period,” he said. “She was just starting to take tournament poker seriously at that time and it’s been cool to see her evolution. She’s seen my ups and downs too, as 2023 was not the strongest year for me. We both understand [the variance] and are there for each other that way. It’s nice to have that support.”

The two talk poker regularly, but sometimes his girlfriend prefers other topics.

“I always want to talk about poker, so she definitely balances me a little bit,” he said with a laugh. “It actually works really well. We have a lot in common outside poker. We like very similar TV shows. We have similar body clocks, and we have similar interests.”

Diversifying His Portfolio

After college, Wilson used his finance degree for a time in commercial real estate lending for Bank of America. He found some similarities in that role gauging risk versus rewards with his current day job.  Wilson is also involved in real estate investments with Dokler, who was also nice enough to encourage his college poker buddy to put some of his winnings in Bitcoin.

“I was already making okay money on the side, but then [Bitcoin] tripled and quadrupled,” he says. “All of a sudden I had enough of the bankroll to say, ‘I’m 24, I can take some risks. I’m going to keep in contact with my banking friends and counterparts.’ I had nothing holding me down. I was going to go and travel and see what I could do.”

When he’s not monitoring his investments, Wilson also shares his knowledge of the game with the students over at PokerCoaching.com.

“I always wanted to try and be the best in whatever thing I’m putting my mind to.”

Today, Wilson says he’s really not into cryptocurrency and doesn’t even really understand it. But that boost gave him a start as a poker pro, and allowed him to withstand some of the growing pains that come with your first few years on the circuit.

Looking ahead, Wilson has no specific goals in mind. He simply enjoys playing and wants to keep making the right decisions to stay in the game. He loves the lifestyle and freedom playing professionally brings him.

“I just want to be able to do this for the rest of my life,” he explained. “That was a big goal of mine – to make enough that I can justify doing this and I don’t have to go and get a real job. At this point, I’ve definitely achieved enough that that is not a concern of mine. I have enough confidence in myself that I think I’m good.”

“I want to play $25k, $50k, and $100k events, and be a winning player. I think that’s what is really important to me. I want to be consistently making deep runs, final tables, and winning in big fields. I want to be a good, well-rounded player who can compete at all levels.”

• Photos by PokerGO, World Poker Tour, Seminole Hard Rock