Look Out: Matt Perrins

Matt Perrins is a young poker professional from the small suburban town of Rochdale, which is situated within a short distance of the larger industrial city of Manchester in England. He joined a fellow Rochdale resident named Jake Cody ($25,000 heads-up no-limit hold’em champion) when he won the $1,500 no-limit deuce-to-seven lowball event and his first gold bracelet at the 2011 World Series of Poker. Perrins and Cody are actually friends who have known each other since childhood, making it a small world in the Amazon Room this summer and a golden one for Rochdale.

“This is great,” said Perrins after the win. “To have all of my mates here and to come for the first time and win it. It’s really amazing. I can’t describe it right now.”
Perrins took home $102,105 in prize money for the win to grow his career earnings to $614,212. He grabbed the bulk of his winnings when he won a PokerStars Italian Poker Tour main event in Venice in 2009, which was good for $211,808. The majority of his tournament cashes have come on the regional Grosvenor UK Poker Tour back in England, and in 2010 he began to break through on the European Poker Tour, cashing in 10th place at the Grand Final and in 12th place in the London main event.

The win was impressive for an Englishman, who was attending the WSOP for the first time, but Perrins’ victory was even more extraordinary for an additional reason. Incredibly, he had never played the game until this tournament began. Perrins is a no-limit hold’em specialist, but he later explained that he was tired of playing hold’em and decided to try something “different.” He learned the basics from watching a few free poker videos that were posted online. He admits to being unfamiliar with the game when he began day 1.
“During day 1 and the first three or four hours, I was not sure what was going on,” he said. “I was getting into a few hands, and I was not sure what I should do there. So, I ended up speaking to some of my mates. I started to pick it up.”

Perrins even arrived late on day 2. The second day began at 2:30 p.m., but Perrins arrived one hour late because he could not get a ride to the Rio on time. By day 3 at the final table, Perrins was on time, and he had come to several realizations about deuce-to-seven strategy that allowed him to succeed.

“I knew that everyone had a lot more experience than I did, but as the tournament got deeper I was able to play it a bit like hold’em, and they would fold,” he said. “When I three-bet and was aggressive, it worked.”

Perrins now has one gold bracelet to his name, and it isn’t even in the form of poker in which he has earned his living during his early poker career. If he is able to pick up other forms of poker as quickly as he did deuce-to-seven, he will be a player to look out for in the future. ♠