Canadian Poker Fortunes
Introduction.
The first week in November that saw one Canadian crowned as the 2010 WSOP champion, also saw another top Canadian poker playing professional in effect barred for life from entering the USA and, therefore, the more lucrative poker tournaments. So how do the fortunes of these two Canadian poker players compare.
Poker winner.
At just 23 years of age Canadian Jonathan Duhamel is literally on top of the poker world. Not only did he win this years’ WSOP but picked up another gold bracelet and nearly $9 million in the process. Life can’t get much better at the moment Duhamel who dropped out of university to pursue his dream of playing poker professionally. Not that he’d advocate anyone following in his footsteps, preferring to advise others to stay on at college and get those qualifications. Sound advice of course but when you’re that sort of age, whatever your dream might be, surely you should follow it? The secret to Duhamel’s success apparently is reading poker books and practicing by playing online poker. Prior to his big WSOP win he spent two years earning a living from online poker, often playing six-handed cash poker tables, perfecting his aggressive style of play.
Poker loser.
PokerStars Terrance “unassigned” Chan - set to play his poker in Europe from now on.
For another Canadian poker player, Texas Hold ‘em expert Terrance Chan, he seems to have lost out big-time on the big money American poker tournaments. A regular cash winner himself at WSOP events in the last few years, even being a runner-up in one of the 2007 games, having been refused entry to the USA he is almost certainly now barred from the country for good. His problem was to do with his visa, having expired he was unable to convince Customs and Immigration that he had no intention of staying in America, despite having plenty of documents supporting his good intent. The net result of this is that Terrance has now vowed to look to Europe instead for big money tournaments and opportunities to win a WSOP gold bracelet at events such as the one in London.