Peter Eastgate on Life After the WSOP Main Event

All of a sudden it's over. The cameras are flashing and hands are being shaken. People cheer, microphones abound, and unlimited dreams from the past appear within reach. You've won a World Series of Poker tournament, and not just any tournament, the main event. The title, the bracelet, and millions of dollars are now in your possession, and all the hard work and grind has paid off; your past fears and dashed hopes avenged. Everyone in the poker world (and many outside) now know your name, and many will recognise your face as it's plastered across websites and magazines galore. For most poker enthusiasts, this will only ever be a dream. For Peter Eastgate, it came true at the age of 22. But what comes after the dust settles, and the hype calms? When you reach the top, the question to be asked is - where to now?

Eastgate is an unassuming character. He's quiet and polite, with an understated intelligence, which truly reveals itself in the presence of the green felt. He was like this before the final table, and he is like this now. The nice thing about this young Dane is he is aware of what the game can do, and is adamant he will not change. He is accomodating and polite as he speaks to Card Player while on holiday in Japan, despite the time difference making it 2 a.m. in the morning there.

Asked if life in the spot light is hard to get used to, he says, "It is a little bit, but I'm trying to be better, and be a little bit more confident. I don't mind it though. I don't want to change or act different. I want to stay myself and be the way I am." But in reality is this really possible, with cockiness and arrogance waiting just around the corner... "Well I can't speak for the other guys, and I don't know if it's the correct assumption... but say someone like Phil Hellmuth, I don't know if he was cocky before he became a huge poker star, and that will obviously change a person's profile eventually, but not necessarily for the better or worse. The public needs to understand that some of those guys are performing, and that they are like most people. It's all a big load of bullshit really."

Getting down to business - what has the World Series champion been getting up to since his big win? "I've been travelling a whole lot more to poker tournaments and away with friends. It has been really good. Outside of poker, I moved to England four months before the final table was played, so that was kind of a new life, which I'm still adjusting to. I'm pretty much on the road all the time. I'm enjoying it but it's just a new way of living - some things can be kind of tiring, but all the other things are mostly fun."

So is being the winner of the most respected and famous tournament in the world as glamorous as it appears? Eastgate says, "You can embrace the good things, but it's a responsibility too. The former world champions' conduct themselves very differently, I have respect for the way they conduct themselves, it's their life. I'm not the type to lead a glamorous life, but I enjoy the opportunities and the freedom I have, and I try to take advantage of that."

Speaking of freedom, was there anything Eastgate went out and bought himself after his windfall? "No not really. I'm really not into material things, I like to travel, and drink and have fun. If I need something ... I bought it before the main event, and I'll buy it now. I'm not going to go around and think I would like to buy a new iPod or something like that, I would just go out and buy it."

The only thing that the champion misses nowadays, he admits, is his family and friends. Some companions are lucky enough to be able to keep up with his whereabouts because of their own poker lifestyles, the rest visit as an excuse for a holiday.

When it comes to online poker, Eastgate has been playing a lot of cash games on PokerStars. "It's been kind of swingy," he says. "I could be up half a million or down a half a million dollars." As far as special treatment is concerned, he admits, "I've definitely been getting a lot of action on PokerStars - people want to play me. There's a lot of competition, there's a lot of big winners on the higher stakes who are granted permission to play those stakes. It's a good thing that I get a lot of action, but on the other hand it's a bad thing because a lot of people might have an edge on me. I can definitely improve my game and do better. I need to adjust to what my opponent thinks of my game, and think a lot about my betting patterns and how I'm perceived. I constantly need to think of that and try to counteract it."

The pro's recent impressive play and results have proven that his championship win was nowhere near a fluke. Two months after he took home $9,152,416 from the main event, he slayed his opponents at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure $5,000 side event for a pay-day of $343,000, (despite the fact Eastgate believes the competition was stronger there than the WSOP), nevermind some pat-on-the-back EPT and Premier League results in between. Could it just be a really good run of luck or is it just this young man's time to shine?

"I don't know, maybe it's a bit of both. I'm running pretty good right now. I've been getting some nice cards," he says modestly. "It's really ironic. You can be an average player and win the World Series main event. A lot of poker players have acknowledged the way I played in the main event, people believe I didn't make any mistakes, but on the other hand I wasn't in any situations where I could make a mistake because I had really good hands. I mean I could have played them differently, where I wouldn't get the same value but even my opponents were at times holding the worst cards of the deck, and in some situations the timing of their bluffs was just off, and that was lucky for me. There are so many who really don't understand how much luck there is in this sport."

So, where does the toughest competition hang out? According to Eastgate, it's not on the circuit, but in the virtual stratosphere. "There are so many good players online it's unbelievable. Maybe they are too tough for me, and I might need to step down the stakes." These stakes he speaks of are no-limit $100/$200 and $200/$400, and one of the players he is referring to when he says "too tough" is online phenomenon, Ben "Sauce123" Sulsky. "That guy is insane. He has my number. Like in three or four months time he will have my World Series winnings. I can't keep playing that guy any more but I'm stubborn, so he might win it all," he says jokingly.

Touring the international circuit on a full time basis is bound to become like a job. Even so, Eastgate is enjoying the journey. "Tournaments take a bit more motivation and preparation than a cash game. I prefer to play cash games online. I like tournaments but you need to get past the first three or four levels, because they're so boring. They're just a grind, to me that sucks.

"I like to play the EPTs, even though the structure's kind of fast. That appeals to me because I wouldn't really like to play for seven days straight. So, you can get a little bit of action when you're getting past the fifth or sixth level because you kind of need to gamble, and I like that. The structure for the Grand Final in Monte Carlo is a little bit different, there are a lot of good players there, and it has the biggest prize pool of the EPTs, so obviously I would like to win that one."

Would he ever have dreamt that at 23 years of age he would be a world champion of poker? Eastgate simply replies, "No." But does it feel real now? "Yeah it's real. I've been a professional poker player for the past two and a half years, independently, and obviously the world championship has changed my life in the way that I have a lot more money now and I'm a recognised face, but apart from that life really hasn't changed."

The current world champion is a man of simple needs and pleasures, with no plans. He does not know where he'll be in two or three years time, and hopes that he won't just be playing poker for the rest of his life. As he kicks back on vacation, it is hard not to believe him when he says he is taking "each day as lazy as it comes".