Toronto Man Wins $1.6 Million In Vegas Poker Tournament

When the turn of a card can decapitate your dreams and circling sharks are perpetually sniffing for signs of weakness, every decision a high stakes tournament poker player makes is a matter of virtual life and death.  Make the right ones, and fame, glory, and millions of dollars can fall your way.  Make too many of the wrong ones, and you’re liable to become just another bitter railbird bemoaning your hard luck while the unsympathetic solipsists of the poker world turn a deaf ear. 

Over the past few years, Mike ‘Sir Watts’ Watson, 24, has thrived on the type of pressure that most of us would buckle under, staring deeply into the unflinching eyes of poker’s coldest predators and calling, folding, and bluffing his way to success.  But the hardest decision he’s had to make during his poker career didn’t even come at the tables.  

It came at school. 

Watson, who was born and raised in St. John’s Newfoundland and now calls Toronto home, was more than a year into a Masters program at the University of Waterloo when he made a choice that would initially baffle his parents, but ultimately lead to last week’s win of $1,673,770 at the World Poker Tour’s Bellagio Cup IV in Las Vegas.  

Like he so often does at the poker table, Watson weighed his options carefully, but eventually gathered up the nerve to tell his parents, both of whom are university professors, that he was dropping out of school, leaving behind the security of an elite education to pursue a career in the unpredictable world of poker, where mind-numbing swings and sickening suckouts have brought more than a few hardened rounders to their knees.  

“I didn’t really like my Masters program that I was doing,” he admits.  “I had to write a thesis and I didn’t really like the subject that I was doing all the research on…I didn’t find it that interesting.  And between that and having poker as a viable alternative and one that I really enjoyed, the combination of those two things made me eventually decide that I had to go a different way.”

“It took me a long time to make the decision,” he adds.  “I didn’t want to drop out.  I had put so much work into the Masters that I definitely wanted to try and finish but eventually I decided I couldn’t do that.  Explaining to my parents wasn’t an easy thing.  They are both university professors, so obviously education is very important to them.  (But eventually) they were seeing that I was having a lot of success playing poker and that it was something I enjoyed to do, so by the time I got around to that point they were pretty supportive.”

(Photo Courtesy Of WPT)

Watson only began playing poker about four years ago, but he immediately became intrigued by the game, and with his background in mathematics (he has a degree on the subject), he quickly caught on to many of the game’s advanced concepts.

“I started playing little small games with friends at lunch, I was working as a research assistant one summer in St. Johns .  And we’d just play for a couple of bucks over lunch to kill time and immediately I was really into the game and I started trying to learn more about it reading books and finding out about posting online at poker forums.  Eventually I found out about online poker and made a couple deposits and just sort of went from there.”

“The mathematical aspect of the game comes to me pretty easily, pretty naturally.  But obviously there’s a lot more to it than just the math…You have to take in all this information and make assumptions based on all these reads and things that you pick up.  And you have to do the math afterwards after you’ve put all this information into your calculations.”

Like many young aspiring players with dreams of instant success, Watson was quickly humbled during his early online days. 

“I blew through my first couple of $50 dollar deposits online, then I think the third time I made a $100 deposit and decided I was going to try to exercise some more proper bankroll management, and started to do things properly and run that up, and I didn’t look back from that point.”

“I was just grinding it out.  Early on I didn’t really have any big tournament scores that really vaulted my bankroll to another level.  When I started playing I was playing really small stakes limit hold ’em online and sort of grinding out and whenever my bankroll got big enough I would move up to the next level.”

But Watson wouldn’t remain at the small stakes tables for long.  After about two years of honing his skills, he started jumping into some of the more frightening online cash games, clashing with famous pros and holding his own while slowly building his bankroll.  He also started buying in to live tournaments where he had decent, but not remarkable results.  All that was about to change when the summer of 2008 rolled around.

A ROUGH START TO A MAGICAL SEASON

Watson’s confidence was high going into the 2008 World Series of Poker in Las Vegas .  In March he won $61,610 US after finishing 10 ^th at the WPT’s L.A. Poker Classic.  It was his largest live tournament cash to date and he had his ambitious sights set firmly on the W.S.O.P., a marathon of cards that commences in late May, and culminates with the Main Event in July (with this year’s final table in November). 

Unfortunately, he wouldn’t meet his lofty goals, and after cashing in just two events for a combined total of about $14,000 (far less than his accumulated buy-ins), he was preparing to concede that the summer was a bust.  But there was another event looming, and it was a big one.  

After being knocked out of the W.S.O.P.’s Main Event, Watson dipped into his wallet again and forked over the $15,400 entry fee for the Championship Event at the World Poker Tour’s Bellagio Cup IV.   It would be his chance at redemption and a chance to test his stamina.  In 07′, after a similarly gruelling and unprofitable W.S.O.P, Watson entered the event at the Bellagio exhausted and was rapidly ousted.  He blamed a lack of focus and inexperience.  This time, however, he was ready.

( Photo Courtesy of Pokerlistings.com)

DREAMS COME TRUE AT BELLAGIO

Mike ‘Sir Watts’ Watson sat down on Day 1 of the event with the simple goal of playing solid poker.  And he did just that, picking up pots when he sensed weakness, laying hands down when he sensed danger, and not only trying to survive, but accumulate chips in an event that was teeming with dangerous pros.  

He had a few swings, but managed to stay alive and soon found himself deep in the tourney with a considerable stack.  He also got a little lucky along the way — his 10 10 outdrew Glen Chorny’s AA in a preflop race, sending a rattled Chorny to the rail.  

Chorny, who hails from Waterloo Ontario and is an acquaintance of Watson’s, quickly logged onto Pokerforum.ca, where friends of both players were tracking their results, and cursed his bad luck, calling it the worst bad beat he’s suffered in tournament poker.  He didn’t receive much sympathy, however, especially considering the fact that he pocketed a cool $3,193,822.00 after winning the 2008 EPT Grand Final in April.   

“That was the first time in the tournament when I got really lucky, when I got the money in behind,” admitted an unapologetic Watson. 

Another notable hand came late in the tournament with Watson heads-up against pro John Phan.  Phan raised Watson’s 80,000 big blind to 240,00 from the cut-off, and Watson pumped it up with a re-raise to 700,000, which Phan called.  When the flop came K42, an out-of-position Watson boldly pushed 1 million chips into the pot.  Phan went into the tank for almost 10 minutes before another player, Gabe Thaler, called the clock on him.  With just a few seconds remaining, Phan folded, showing Watson his QQ.  Watson didn’t show his hand, and coolly gathered the mountain of chips.

When asked if he had Phan’s pair of Queens beaten, Watson chuckles, “No, I had Q3 off-suit, I had nothing.  He had done something a little earlier that made me pretty sure he didn’t want to play a big pot before the final table, so I decided to make a move on him.  Unfortunately I ran into a big hand, but was able to bluff my way out of it.”

It’s often said that to win a large-field poker tournament, a player has to get lucky, outplay his/her opponents, and win some crucial coin-flips.  Watson proved he could do the first two against Chorny and Phan, but the crucial coin-flip win was still to come. 

After whittling the field down to a fearsome final 6 of Watson, David Benyamine, Luke Staudenmaier, Ralph (KJ) Perry, Thaler, and Phan, Sir Watts found himself with the chip lead, and before long he was heads up with Benyamine for the title. 

The husky Frenchman wasn’t exactly who Watson wanted to see when it came down to heads up play.

“He’s a guy I haven’t had much success against in the past,” Watson admits.  “I played against him online a little bit and have actually been very unlucky against him.  He won several big pots against me in relatively big cash games online where he kind of got lucky.  And in tournaments, in the few we’ve played together, he’d been getting the best of me in a lot of them.  But I finally caught some breaks against him heads up.”

After some back and forth action, Watson was ready to win his crucial coin-flip.  Both players found themselves all-in during a classic poker confrontation that would propel the winner to a huge cheap lead, and cripple the loser.  Benyamine held QQ and Watson had AK.   Benyamine’s hand held until the river when an ace fell to the felt and Watson’s cheering section, made up primarily of other young online pros, erupted. 

But the work wasn’t over yet.  Benyamine was down, but not out.  A few hands later, Watson pushed him all-in with Q9.  Benyamine, who considered becoming a pro tennis player before turning to poker, was looking to rally.  He called, turning over K9, and Watson’s hand was dominated.  But when a Queen hit the fop, the tables had turned, and Watson had to dodge a King to take home the title, and the $1.6 million in cash.  The feared King stayed in the deck, and Mike ‘Sir Watts’ Watson had won the tournament.

“I don’t even know if it’s entirely sunk in or not, it was so much fun,” he said, a day before flying out to Newfoundland to visit friends and family.  “I had two small cashes at the World Series, but it had been a pretty unsuccessful summer and obviously I came in with pretty high expectations.  So ending it the way I did it was almost like a story book ending with the ways things worked out.”

At just 24, it appears that Watson’s story will have several more intriguing chapters waiting to be penned.  In the meantime, he’s enjoying the moment.   It turns out his decision to leave school wasn’t that bad after all, although he admits he still considers it unfinished business.

“I don’t have any really long term plans, I definitely would consider going back to school at some point…(but) for the time being I’m quite happy playing poker and it’s what I plan to do for a little while.  In a few years down the road, if I’ve accomplished what I wanted to in poker, if it’s not as fun or interesting, then going back to school is definitely a strong possibility.”

michaelt@citytv.com