No Deposit Poker
Mansour Matloubi

This Month in UK Poker History: May

Mansour Matloubi

Get ready for a walk down memory lane as we bring you some of the most important moments in UK poker history that occurred while the spring flowers were starting to bloom in the month of May.

In this column you’ll read about a couple of extremely significant WSOP victories, the genesis of one of the game’s brightest stars career, along with three UK legends who will be celebrating birthdays in May.

Notable May Events in UK Poker History

Mansour Matloubi wins the 1990 WSOP Main Event

On May 14, 1990, Londoner Mansour Matloubi became the first non-US poker player to win the World Series of Poker Main Event.  Matloubi bested a final table that included a pretty impressive lineup: 2004 WSOP final table participant Al Krux, former WSOP Champion Berry Johnson, longtime poker pro “Big” John Bonetti, the legendary Stu Ungar, and his heads-up opponent Hans “Tuna” Lund on his way to victory. Mansour would also make the final table of the 1993 WSOP Main Event, where he finished in 4th place.

Matloubi has become a recluse of sorts over the past decade, which shouldn’t be all that surprising considering his name has been tied to the Ultimate Bet Super-User scandal in recent years. His last recorded tournament cash was in 2006 in Singapore, and prior to that you have to go all the way back to the 2001 WSOP to find a tournament that required Mansour to head to the cashier’s cage.

Devilfish wins his first WSOP bracelet in 1997

On May 1, 1997 the UK woke up to the news that Dave “Devilfish” Ulliott won his first World Series of Poker bracelet the previous night –ok, barely anyone in the UK had a clue as to what a WSOP bracelet or a poker-playing Devilfish were in 1997, but it would have been big news just a decade later in 2007! While the win technically came on April 30th, it was May 1st in the UK when it happened, so I’m putting it in this month’s column.

Ulliott has been a thorn in the side of his fellow poker players since the early 1990’s, and is still one of the best-known players in the UK thanks to his penchant for pawned jewelry and profane language. Devilfish has never duplicated his WSOP win from 1997, but he does have four 2nd place finishes and three 3rd place finishes in WSOP events since. Ulliott also won a WPT title in 2003, when he took-down the Jack Binion Poker Open; his career tournament earnings are currently at just over $6 million.

Here is a little taste of the Devilfish’s “salty” table talk with one of his longtime smack-talking nemeses Tony G: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=DrBj6pv3ZyI

Ladies and Gentlemen, may we present Liv Boeree

On May 7, 2008 the poker world was introduced to a poker playing astrophysicist/rock-guitarist/model named Liv Boeree, after her win at the Ladbrokes Poker European Ladies Championship that netted her a cool $42,000. Boeree was a virtual unknown at the time, but it seems her greatness was apparent right from the get-go, as PokerNews.com said at the time, “Watch here… for coming reports of this fresh new face of women’s poker.”

So what has Liv done since then? Oh, not too much, other than an EPT San Remo win in 2010 worth close to $1.7 million and racking up over $2.2 million in live career tournament earnings, plus a few big online poker scores.  Did I forget to mention that Boeree is basically the female face of PokerStars, where she is one of the site’s most marketed poker pros?

May Birthdays

This month the birthday list looks more like a list of Hall of Fame finalists or Lifetime Achievement Award winner, as three of the pioneers of UK poker are celebrating birthdays in May.

John Duthie was born on May 13, 1958

John Duthie is best known for his developmental role with the European Poker Tour, as a founder and then as a CEO, but his first exploits in the poker world were as a player. Duthie won the Poker Million tournament in 2000, earning a first-place-prize of £1,000,000, which led to several Late Night Poker invitations. But Duthie’s background was in television production, a background he used to create and monetize the European Poker Tour. In 2011 Duthie stepped-down from his role with the EPT and also let his Team PokerStars Pro contract expire at the same time.

Anthony Holden was born on May 22, 1947

The British author started out as a lamb among the wolves during the 1988 WSOP, but a fateful hand against the late Stu Ungar would change Holden’s career trajectory from that day forward. Holden would go on to write the terrific biopic Big Deal, about that fateful hand and the year that followed it. He wrote his second poker biopic, Bigger Deal, during the poker boom, and later became the President of the International Federation of Poker (IFP) an organization devoted to getting poker recognized as a true game of skill. Holden recently stepped-down as IFP president, but remains an integral part of the organization.

Simon Trumper was born on May 31, 1963

Simon “Aces” Trumper was heralded as the best young talents in British poker in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, a truly unfortunate tag that may have aided in Trumper’s dramatic fall from grace as a poker player. But Trumper’s rags-to-riches-to-rags story had a positive outcome in the end, leading him to do some deep introspection and eventually to his current job as the head honcho for the Dusk Till Dawn Poker Room. Trumper’s tale also acts as a word of warning for all the youngsters out there who think they are going to conquer the poker world after one or two good sized wins.

*Resources: www.thehendonmob.com, www.wikipedia.org

Steve Ruddock

Steve has been writing about online poker news for about as long as there has been online poker news to write about. A contributor to over a dozen sites, Steve handles our weekly Around Online Poker news wrap up.

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