Peter Eastgate
Eastgate was only 22 when he won the WSOP Main Event in 2008 for $9,152,416, becoming the youngest champion of all time – until Joe Cada broke his record. Before the final table victory, he was a PokerStars pro and he also remained a successful player after the great breakthrough, winning the PCA $4,800 NLHE side event for $343,000 in 2009, for instance. He also finished 2nd in the EPT London Main Event of the same year for $843,734. In 2010, however, he announced his retirement from poker:
"When I started playing poker for a living, it was never my goal to spend the rest of my life as a professional poker player. My goal was to become financially independent. I achieved that by winning the WSOP Main Event in 2008. The period following has taken me on a worldwide tour, where I have seen some amazing places and met many new people; it has been a great experience. In the 20 months following my WSOP win, I feel that I have lost my motivation for playing high level poker along the way and I have decided that now is the time to find out what I want to do with the rest of my life. What this will be, I do not yet know. I have decided to take a break from live tournament poker, and try to focus on Peter Eastgate, the person," he stated back then.
In November, 2010 he sort of shocked the poker community by offering his WSOP bracelet for sale on eBay; even though he meant the income to go for charity, many players considered this a huge blow to the reputation of the WSOP and poker in general.
In February, 2011, Eastgate came back to poker by participating in the EPT Copenhagen as well as in the NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship that March. He only got in the money in the EPT Berlin, however, where he finished 94th for $14,232. He now joins players like Annette Obrestad and John Tabatabai at Betfair Poker.
Eastgate’s Team Betfair introductory interview:
0 comments