Roy Brindley Interviews WSOP Winner Steve Jelinek

Steve Jelinek’s 2010 WSOP Bracelet win in the $1,500 Omaha Hi-Lo Split was not overdue or a total surprise to everyone in poker as this interview i did with the player in April 2009 explicates.

The world of poker can be a lonely place. For the losers there are the usual and understandable emotions: Dejection, dismay, melancholy and, if you are lucky, a bad-beat story which, irksomely, few want to hear.

But for winners too poker can be an amazingly forlorn environment where solitude is part and parcel of every day existence. Welcome to the life and times of Steve Jelinek.

Picture the scene, you have just out-wit and out-battled up to a thousand opponents from all over the world to win an all-expenses paid five-star trip half-way around the globe, a £25,000 prize, or both.

Scores of well-wishing phone calls follow, people pop around to congratulate you, the local papers get in touch and, if a title of some kind is attached to your victory, even regional television gets in on the act.

Yet, as a poker player, hiding behind the total anonymity of an on-screen alias, crossed eyed through staring at a monitor, your moment of glory has probably arrived at an unearthly 5am after nine hours of play. Not a sole knows or cares who you are or how it feels.

Jelinek, a 38-year-old Sheffield Native now based in Birmingham, knows this loneliness better than anyone else. He has, after all, experienced this on untold occasions.

“At a last count I had won my way into fifteen Poker Stars European Poker Tour legs via online qualifiers,” he states in his typical mild-mannered almost embarrassed way when posed the question.

Additionally, and reluctantly, he also admits to qualifying for the Irish Open three times, the Aussie Millions_, the L_adbrokes Poker Million_, the William Hill Grand Prix_, a host of GUKPT events, four trips to Vegas for the World Series, four jaunts to the Bahamas to name just part of his haul. In all there has been about $400,000 worth of tournament entries and holidays.

It is impressive curriculum vitae alright but not only is the former IT manager, who turned his back on a 16 year working career to take up poker, reticent and modest, he is also a realist.

“Since I have played full-time I am net losing on the Internet, but that is compensated by my winnings at live events. I prefer playing in land-based tournaments as I can often ‘tilt’ on the Internet but I never do live.

“The Internet for me should be just a means to an end, to qualify for big tournaments, but I play way too much other stuff for my own good. At the end of the day Internet poker has taken me to at least ten countries and I love both travelling and the excitement of getting into big live events.”

It is refreshing to find such a pragmatist within poker circles, given the chance most would have you believe they never lose. The flip side to Steve Jelinek’s coin, of course, are those live winnings.

In less than six years he has cashed in no less than sixty tournaments globally and, in recent months, he has suffered some agonising near misses: Collecting €25,000 for his fourteenth in the Dortmund EPT and €44,220 for eighth in Amsterdam’s Masterclassics of Poker. On both occasions he was the highest placed Englishman but narrowly missed out on a substantial six-figure payday.

Clearly Steve Jelinek knows how to cash big. Two years ago he once again narrowly missed the winner’s rostrum when finishing sixth in the EPT Grand final netting him €305,270 but others made the headlines.

Winning big is something all together different though and it is his lack of titles and trophies which has seen his live poker career mirror his online achievements. They have not been forgotten, it is as if they never existed. People seem blissfully unaware of his accomplishments and his ability.

Whilst one-off big winners and high-profile under achievers with sponsorship deals make magazine covers, poker is in danger of losing Steve Jelinek who has yet to be the subject of a feature story of any kind amongst the plethora of poker publications in the marketplace.

“Even with a good qualification record, tournament poker is fantastically tough to make a good living at if you get no assistance. I am still living off my big win in Monte Carlo in 2007, but I’ve decided to have a blow out and my girlfriend, Irina, and I are going to Kenya, Thailand, the Caribbean and maybe a few other countries in coming months.

“I don’t want the win to just have funded more poker. After that, in 2010, if I have not had another big result I will look to mix poker with IT consultancy work. I’d obviously prefer not to have to do that as I love to play.”

Poker needs more level-headed people like Steve Jelinek. He is one of the good guys in an often cut-throat business and, for both his sake and ours, let’s hope another big result, and possibly a trophy is on the horizon.