Bloggers / Matthew Pitt / 09 July 2009 / Leave a Comment

A couple of weeks ago you may remember me mentioning that I planned to play in the Prize Fighter promotion run by Betfair Poker and Poker Player Magazine. Well due some unforeseen circumstances I never managed to play and to be honest I am quite happy that I didn't as one guy simply dominated the final two rounds.

For those of you not familiar with the Prize Fighter promotion, here is a quick run-down. Basically, over the period of two weeks players were awarded points for play cash games, SNG or MTT. To make the promotion open to everyone, the stakes were capped at NL100 for cash games and $20 for the tournament side of things. If you picked up points in more than one field you were entered into a mixed discipline leaderboard also. At the end of the two weeks each of the leaderboards awarded a decent chunk of cash to the people in them.

So now you're up to speed again! Playing under the alias premliga, one man tore apart the fields in all three disciplines for the last two weeks. During round five of six, the 35-year old from Gravesend finished at the top of the cash tree, second for multi-table tournaments and third in the Sit and goes. If that was not impressive enough, by the end of the final round he came second for cash games, fourth for SNG and seventh for MTT's! His results across both rounds also saw him finish in first place in the mixed category for both weeks.

What is most impressive however is that he did all of this from just a starting bankroll of $50, yes fifty bucks! I caught up with him and asked him a few questions.

How long have you been playing poker for?

In total eight years

What is your preferred discipline?

I prefer to play MTTs, both Hold'em and Pot-limit Omaha but I am comfortable playing all the disciplines really

What are your usual stakes and did you alter these specifically for the promotion?

I am a low stakes player but for the Prize fighter series I was playing solely for the leaderboard, and off a $50 bankroll, so I only played $0.02/$0.04 cash games $2 and $3 SNG and MTTs $5 and under

How many tables and hours do you usually play and did this change for the promotion?

I prefer to play 3-5 tables as a general rule as I find it easier to keep my concentration and patience than if I only play a single table. However, during the promotion I often played 6-10 tables for 12-14 hours at a time although my game suffered for this.

You essentially dominated all three disciplines during Round 5 and Round 6? How did you manage to rank so highly across all leaderboards?

With great difficulty, LOL! I was just prepared to put in hours and hours of grinding

Any tips for up and coming players?

To learn the basics you have to play for actual money. You don't necessarily have to put up some money but there needs to be a money prize involved or people don't take it seriously enough.

What is your biggest achievement in poker so far?

I'd have to say it was my first tournament win. Although it wasn't for a lot of cash, the buzz from beating a couple of hundred players was immense

Which player do you respect most at the Betfair Poker tables?

That's a tough question as there are quite a few but gnasher8 certainly stands out from the crowd.

So there you have it, proof that as long as you are prepared to put in the time and effort, you too can start to be a success at poker, even if you have limited resources available to you.

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