Ethan Yau: Life Assets, Big Profits, Great Losses, Sponsorships, and Scandals

Quick Background on Ethan Yau

Ethan Yau, also known as “Rampage” or “Rampage Poker” on YouTube, is an American professional poker player and poker vlogger. He was born in 1997 in the Boston area of Massachusetts.

Ethan Yau

He is best known for his YouTube channel, which has over 100,000 subscribers, and where he regularly posts poker vlogs. Typically, his vlogs features are him playing cash games and tournaments in Las Vegas. In terms of tournaments, he has a total of $252,000 in live cashes.

Yau also won a WSOP gold bracelet in 2020, winning $164,494 in the $500 No Limit Hold’em – Grande Final online event.

Important Dates of His Poker Career

As of the year 2018, he’s been keeping a YouTube channel in which he documents his poker exploits through vlogs.

In 2020, he got his first WSOP gold bracelet because he won the $500 No Limit Hold’em – Grande Final online event for $164,494 and came in first place. A year after, Ethan won $230,379 in Las Vegas at the $1,100 Mid-Stakes Poker Tour No Limit Hold’em event.

The @msptpoker @VenetianPoker $1,100 Main Event wrapped up today with Ethan Yau aka @rampagepoker taking home the trophy and $230,379!

Read the full recap here:https://t.co/wEOohyR3XS pic.twitter.com/Y4ygbTkIfu

— PokerNews (@PokerNews) October 16, 2021

It is the most money he has ever bagged in a single live tournament in his career.

Ethan’s Career History

The Start of Yau’s Poker Career

According to a YouTube interview with The Whiteboard Finance Show, Yau began playing poker around the same time he began vlogging: in January of 2018.

However, a different source indicated that he was still in college at the time (his major was in business). But, some pieces of evidence supported him where he lost $500 in his first cash game session at a local casino that had just opened up 30 minutes away from his college. This lines up with his statements in the interview.

Yau claims in it that he learned proper poker strategy primarily from comments on his videos.

As a result, he didn’t have a deep strategic understanding of the game when he started his first session. For example, he risked $500 in a single buy-in with a total of $3,000 to his name. That, he admits now, was not proper bankroll management.

Yau in Cash Games Live

Live No Limit Hold’em cash games were Yau’s primary focus for a long time. As previously stated, he began by playing live cash at a newly opened casino near his university in Massachusetts.

His previous vlogs on his channel are all about cash game sessions. In the most recent videos, he began with $1/$2 NLHE and gradually progressed to $5/$10 NLHE. The most recent videos were shot in casinos in Las Vegas, including The Wynn and The Venetian.

Yau also appeared on a few smaller live-streamed cash game shows. In September 2021, he played for much higher stakes than usual, $25/$50 NLHE on a live stream from San Antonio’s Rounders Card Club.

He appeared on Lodge Live’s show in May 2021, in a session of $5/$5 No Limit Hold’em. There, he won a massive $18,800 pot (3,760 BBs!) against a man only known as “E.” With a pair of Kings, E defeated Rampage and took down the enormous pot.

World of Poker Online

No online tournament results of Yau are known. He goes by the screen name “RampageP” on the World Series of Poker.

Ethan Yau Live Poker Tournaments

According to his Hendon page, Yau has a total of $252,172 in live tournament cashes.

That total is the sum of ITM finishes in only 9 live events over the course of two years. Yau’s low number of cashes is due to the fact that he only began playing poker in 2018 and only played cash games for the first two years on the felt.

His profile’s first result is from October 2019. He won $1,800 after finishing fourth in a $160 No Limit Hold’em event at the Encore Boston Harbor Recurring Tournaments in Everett, MA.

Another is his finished as 64th out of 531 runners in the $2,200 No Limit Hold’em Deep Stack event at the WPT Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown in Hollywood, FL in April 2021. He was paid $3,990 for that appearance. He finished 12th in the $1,100 NLHE event at The Wynn Fall Classic in Las Vegas in November 2021, earning $6,674.

Yau has the highest live tournament score to date, which was recorded in October 2021. He won the $1,100 No Limit Hold’em – Mid Stakes Poker Tour event at The Venetian’s DeepStack Championship Poker Series. He received a total of $230,379 for his victory.

Ethan Yau in WSOP Events

So far, Ethan Yau has only won one WSOP gold bracelet.

When the deadly COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 forced all WSOP events to be played online, he won the $500 NLHE Grande Finale event, earning himself $164,494.

Yau won the title by defeating Brian Patrick of California in a head-to-head match. Yau’s first bracelet win was a significant achievement for him because he saw himself as a cash game pro with little interest in tournaments at the time. This victory altered his perception of himself.

All of his WSOP cash has come from online events; he has yet to cash in a live tournament. Yau has a total of $187,737 in earnings from 14 World Series events.

Yau’s Poker Vlogs on Youtube

In January 2018, Yau launched his YouTube channel “Rampage.” The most recent video available was posted on August 16, 2022 with over 70, 000 views. He said that his vlogging was inspired by famous poker vloggers Brad Owen and Andrew Neeme.

According to his Social Blade page, his channel went viral in July 2020. In July, he received approximately 1 million views on his videos, up from 200 000 in June. In the same month, his monthly gained subscribers increased from 1,600 to 8,600.

He currently has almost 150,000 subscribers on his channel. His videos consistently receive between 100,000 and 150,000 views. His most popular video to date is “A $5,000 SUN RUN SESSION! ALL-IN 9 TIMES! | Poker Vlog #304,” which was uploaded in June 2021.

It has received over 550,000 views and depicts Yau participating in a highly successful $2/$5 No Limit Hold’em cash game session at Chasers Poker Room and Casino in Salem, New Hampshire.

Sponsorships and Issues About Ethan Yau

Yau promoted X-Poker, a real money poker app, in April 2021. He also sells merchandise to his YouTube followers.

In August and September of 2021, two threads appeared on the popular poker forum Two Plus Two, accusing Yau of nefarious activities. One accuses him of running a “Ponzi scheme and fraud poker club,” while the other accuses him of running a “illegal online poker network.”

However, moderators closed both of those threads due to a lack of evidence.