Player Interviews

Poker Player Interviews

Over the coming weeks, Ladbrokes Poker will be featuring some of our recent online poker tournament winners. Here is an interview with the latest winner of a trip to the World Series of Poker with Team Ladbrokes!

Alias: Waverbridge
Age: 34
Sex: Male
Town: Wigton Country: UK Occupation Managing Director of a recruitment company

I live close to the edge of the Lake District, and we don’t have any casinos locally, so online play is the only viable option for poker - other than home games or a 150 mile round trip to Newcastle! I was introduced to poker in 2005 by my brother "Taffy_P" and started taking it seriously around a year ago.

Last year, only a few weeks after reading Dan Harrington’s book I almost qualified for the WSOP, coming 4th when the top 3 went to Vegas. "Messydesi" was on the button and had around 3,000 chips and went all in, I was on the big blind with 1,000 chips already invested so I called him to knock him out. He doubled up and kept on throwing his chips all in. Before I knew it he had overtaken me and I was the one getting blinded out of the tournament. Eventually I went out. Gutted. A week later I was in the weekly final and came 5th on the bubble. Even more Gutted! "Messydesi" went on to cash almost $60,000 dollars in the main event which is an amazing achievement.

This year I was very relaxed about the whole thing and bought into the daily final on Sunday night for $100, I qualified through that and got into the weekly final. I had a strategy and a game plan from the beginning and stuck to it, culminating in my qualification to the 2008 WSOP main event!

The fact of the matter is that I don’t consider myself to be a serious poker player, nor a professional and from a $100 dollar stake I have now won the trip of a lifetime to Las Vegas with the opportunity to become a multimillionaire! Quite literally anybody is capable of doing what I have done.

By coincidence I am actually attending a wedding in Vegas in June, and am going to take the opportunity to play in a $1,500 no limit holdem event as a ‘dry run’ for the big one. In terms of the main event I am going to employ a strategy and hope to end up in the money, and with a bit of luck a lot higher up the money list! This is the 'Blue Ribbon' event that every poker player, professional or amateur wants to win. I can’t score a goal in an FA Cup final, or play in a Wimbledon final, or win The Open. What I can do is buy in and have as good a chance of winning the main event as anyone else, and all for an initial entry fee of £50! That’s why Poker is such an amazing game.