The atmosphere at the Aspers Westfield Stratford City is buzzing with excitement as the partypoker WPT National UK London heads into town. Among those competing for what should be a five-figure score are a host of smiling players who won their seats to this fantastic event online at partypoker. We caught up with four such online qualifiers earlier and asked them a few questions about their poker playing.
Of the quartet, Daniel Creser and Norbert Berent have been playing poker for the least amount of time, but both have five years playing experience behind them. Thirty-eight year old Stuart Nash is a motor electrician by day while at night he logs onto partypoker to play poker, something he has done for the past 10 years. Meanwhile, Peter Struzyna has been playing poker since the tender age of five-years after his grandfather introduced him to the joys of Five-Card Draw. Here’s hoping Peter knows how to play No Limit Hold’em, too!
All four players are understandably excited to be playing in such a prestigious tournament as three describe themselves as being keen recreational players who are looking forward to competing for a potentially huge payday, while Daniel plays this beautiful game semi-professionally.
“If I was to win the Main Event, sorry, when I win the Main Event, I intend to go back to Las Vegas and play at the Bellagio hotel,” explained Daniel, “I visited Vegas about seven years ago, but poker hadn’t taken over my life at that point!”
Stuart also plans to head to “Sin City” if and when he wins the WPT National UK London Main Event: “If I managed to win the tournament, I’d love to bankroll myself for the 2014 World Series of Poker in Las Vegas with some of the prize money.” In case Mrs Nash is reading, Stuart has said that he would spend some of the money renovating the family home and treating his wife and daughter to an amazing holiday, which is exactly what Norbert plans to do, too.
Although none of our four heroes are vastly experienced in the live poker arena, all gave our readers some solid advice that would not have been out of place coming from the likes of Sam Trickett, Daniel Negreanu, Viktor Blom or Gus Hansen – the favourite players of the qualifiers.
“Be patient, keep calm and be extremely careful when slowplayin aces,” tips Stuart, great tournament advice if ever we heard it.” Both Daniel and Peter says patience is key and Norbert states that as a budding poker player you need to be working on your game away from the poker table if you want to improve.
We will be looking out for these four hopefuls as they take part in the historic WPT National UK London Main Event. Good luck, gentlemen. We’ll see you at the final table.