How a British Chef Won A Million Dollars Playing Poker Online!
$1,000,000 WINNER!
By now most poker fans have heard the name of Lee Biddulph, famous for being the first player to win the biggest online prize ever offered:$1,000,000! The prize was presented by Paradise Poker actually in Paradise(Costa Rica). What’s not been reported so widely is the detail of the final game which took the 28 year old chef from obscurity to a fortune.
THE DRAMA!
Having disposed of four thousand other hopeful competitors along the way, Lee, who cooks and tinkers with motorbikes, faced Mike Darweesh, a software engineer from Arizona who processes images of Mars for NASA. Now who would your money have been on? A chef versus a scientist?
Seven hours at the final table and in the second to last hand both players checked all the way through to the river, four diamonds on the board of community cards already glaring them in the face. Mike Darweesh started with a bet of $200,000 and after a moment’s thought, Lee Biddulph re-raised to $600,000. Mike called and flipped over his nine of diamonds. Lee tossed over his ten of diamonds and took the pot with the fractionally higher flush. And so to the final hand. Each player was all-in before the flop which came ace-six-three. Lee was holding ace-ten and Mike queen-nine. The turn gave up an eight, and when the river produced another six, Lee went into shock and his girlfriend Debbie broke down. It was all over for Mike Darweesh. The King of the kitchen had hammered the Man from Mars.
CHAMP WAS SHORT STACKED
Lee’s result was all the more remarkable considering he joined the final table hours earlier with $1,580,000 chips against Draweesh’s massive stack of $2,720,000. Despite being short stacked by over a million dollars, Lee came out the winner.
ONLINE POKER IS THE VICTOR
The real victory is for the online game itself. By enabling a freeroll tournament for amateurs (Lee had only been playing since 2002) Paradise Poker’s $1,000,000 prize caught the imagination of onliners everywhere in search of a free entry chance at mega bucks. It provides further evidence that online poker is a great leveller. You don’t have to be a professional to hit the monster payouts. A few years of online play can produce big winners as Lee Biddulph will testify. While massively hyped physical events like the World Series of Poker continue to generate prize money in the mega millions the day is drawing closer when online payouts will soon take over.
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ALL THE ACES poker column:
Monday, October 03, 2005: Poker Paradise's One Million Dollar Winner!
