Peter Eastgate - 2008 Main Event WSOP Champion

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Peter Eastgate - 2008 Main Event WSOP Champion

Two weeks after the conclusion of the WSOP Main Event and Las Vegas is still buzzing with poker excitement. For me, though, it's been several hectic weeks of travel to host a couple of important charity poker tournaments. I started in Montreal for the Starlight Foundation, then to Philadelphia for the Children's Hospital, and finally made it to Phoenix for my own charity tournament, Hold'em for Heroes.

In today's column, we turn back the clock and learn about last year's Main Event champion, Danish pro Peter Eastgate, as excerpted from my just-released book, Deal Me In:

I went to college for just half a year, studying economics at Aarhus University in Denmark. While there, I started playing poker with friends in live games. One friend told me about playing online and I found that I really enjoyed it.

One aspect of online play that I enjoyed most was playing multiple tables at once. I could fold two hands but still be involved in plenty of action at two other tables. Sometimes I'd play as many as seven tables at a time but most of the time just four or five.

When you're playing multiple tables, you can learn the game very quickly because you're exposed to many different hands and situations in a short period of time.

I first realized that I could make enough money playing poker for it to become my career in the summer of 2006. By then, I started beating medium-stakes games regularly and made about $300,000 by the end of that year.

I qualified for the 2008 World Series of Poker Main Event via the Ladbrokes Poker website. Early in the tournament, I encountered hundreds of amateurs who all dreamed of playing in the WSOP Main Event. For them, it was like a fairy tale. One thing I immediately noticed was that the tournament attracted many bad players strictly because they wanted to be part of the event; they knew they had no shot to win but they entered anyway.

I hadn't made much of a mark in live tournament play prior to the WSOP Main Event. In fact, before the WSOP, my greatest accomplishment had been making the final table at the 2007 Irish Poker Open where I finished ninth.

At the Main Event, one factor that played a role in my success was that because I had not played in many live tournaments, and was not a known entity around Las Vegas, some players might have overlooked me or looked past me. Not that I think anyone showed me a lack of respect but I don't believe that many players thought I was a real threat to win.

When I play poker, I'm known for staying calm and collected at all times – at least on the outside. Inside, however, I'm really feeling the tension. I played a little below average for the first three or four days and went all-in only twice. After that, though, I never had my entire stack threatened. There were moments when players had me covered but I was mentally prepared for them to make a move or to try to knock me out.

At the final table, I went heads-up against Russian pro Ivan Demidov. I had never played against him but I had watched him play on Day 5 and Day 7.I knew a little about how he played. I knew he was capable of some very misleading moves. In fact, he did try some tricky things, but unfortunately for him, I had a number of very strong hands that I would never fold.

I ending up winning the tournament and earned about $9 million. I also became the youngest WSOP Main Event champion in history, breaking the 20-year record that had been held by Phil Hellmuth.