Poker Winner's Circle Q & A -- Barry ShulmanShulman Gives Details About His WSOP-E Win |
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Card Player CEO Barry Shulman defeated one of the most impressive final tables in poker history to win the 2009 £10,000 World Series of Poker Europe Championship.
The final table included six former WSOP gold bracelet winners – Daniel Negreanu (6 bracelets). Chris Bjorin (2 bracelets), Jason Mercier (1 bracelet), Praz Bansi (1 bracelet), Matt Hawrilenko (1 bracelet), and Shulman (1 bracelet).
Shulman collected £801,603 for first place, picked up his second WSOP bracelet and brought his lifetime tournament winnings total to over $2.8 million.
A grueling 17-hour final table match kept the cozy Empire Casino packed to capacity with raucous fans for the duration. After an exciting heads-up battle with Daniel Negreanu, who became poker’s all time tournament money leader with his second place finish, Shulman spoke about the win.
The Interview
Q: Where does this victory rank among your many accomplishments?
A: When I moved to Vegas I took up poker to try and prove that I could play with the best in the world. I proved it about ten years ago. I haven’t been playing hard since then. I went back to work and bought Card Player magazine. Here we are again and I decided to work hard at poker. Now, I’m back on the winning trail and feeling pretty good about it.
Q: You’ve said this is one of the toughest final tables you’ve ever faced. You’ve played lots of poker so that is quite a statement. Can you give us a little more on that?
A: When I broke into poker, the big tournaments maybe had 100 people. The big buy in’s were $5000, besides the World Series main event, and we would go on the Circuit and probably know 6 or 7 people at each table. That hasn’t happened since the introduction of Chris Moneymaker and internet poker. This tournament, because it was a relatively small field compared to other World Series events and because it had a big buy-in attracted the best players in Europe and brought over a lot of the best players in the United States. There was just no dead money to use a poker expression.
Q: The most talked about hand was when you hit the ace on the river. Tell us about your emotions on that hand?
A: Well the truth is, because it will be on television and we were heads up, I knew that I got in with the best hand. When the Jack came I had frankly pretty much given up. I said to myself ‘well at least I am not going to be embarrassed.’ What are you going to do, that’s poker and when the ace fell, I just about passed out.
Q: Were you even all in and in bad shape during the tournament?
A: Yeah. Daniel had me 4-1 in chips and I check raised him all in on a hand where he laid it down and made a big speech on how I hit a cooler against him and he had to lay down a big hand. I had absolutely nothing. I presume the hand will be on TV, if not it should be.
Q: What is the first thing you are going to say to your son Jeff about this win?
A: Ok, I’ve done my part. You started out doing your part. You put some heat on me and gave me a lot of incentive to play my very best over here in Europe, and now you have a lot of additional incentive in November because if you can win that (2009 World Series of Poker championship) we are going to make WSOP history that may never be broken.
Q: So what motivates you?
A: Money is kind of fun. I love the bracelet. I love winning. It’s a competitive deal. And I have a wife that has expensive habits. I might be break even for life now (laughs).
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