Love Nuke

Kevin Thurston played for 38 hours and beat 300 players to secure the second Grand Series of Poker Live (GSPO), Seville, Spain.

27-year old debt, part of his winnings to Lady Luck, who is busy with his pair of aces – the best cards can be the beginning of the game – during the nail-biting final against the elite of the poker world.

Meanwhile, regulars at his local pub, The Cellar House in Eaton, followed his every bit as they watched the match live from their bar stools.

Now, the punter plans to spend his winning on a trip to Las Vegas to contend for a £10m prize at the Betfair World Series.

Mr Thurston, of Threescore, Colney, said he was close to not taking part in the competition because he did not want to miss the Champions League match between Tottenham Hotspur and Real Madrid.

He said: “The whole experience was surreal – I was really buzzing. In the final game a player raised, a player went all in and I had pocket aces- I was clear second with half a million chips.

“At one point during the final I decided to buy four bottles of champagne and give everyone in the front row glasses to thank them for watching for such a long time.

“When I got to the final two we had a 20 minute break and I looked at my phone and got all the messages of support from people in The Cellar House. It made me think – ‘I can do this’.

“At the end I couldn’t help thinking how close I was to winning it, but I soon realised just how much I had won.”

Kevin Thurston was first introduced to poker when he began playing above his dad’s pub in Brighton.

Since then, he has gone on to compete in poker tournaments in America as well as winning competitions at the Norwich Poker Club.

He decided to take part in the GSPO competition with his friend Sean Rowe after the pair won places, worth £3,500 each, on an online gambling site.

The event was held at the Gran Casino Aljarafe where more than 300 people spent four days competing for the first prize jackpot worth more than £80,000.

Mr Thurston, 27, who is a call centre manager for PLT marketing based in Norwich, said: “I had a feeling I was going to do well, but when i heard people back at home saying it, I started to believe the hype.

“My Facebook just exploded when I was on the final table. The guy who beat me was a world series bracelet winner, which is the highest tournament you can achieve, so I felt I did well to get that far.”

Landlord for The Cellar House pub on Eaton Road, Paul Malynn, said he was thrilled to see Mr Thurston do so well.

He said: “I am delighted for him. His friends were watching him in the pub and cheering him on. He has always been keen on his poker and he has even given up five-a-side football so he could concentrate on getting better.”

But Mr Thurston hasn’t been the only big Norfolk winner at the poker tables this year.

Spencer Benjafield, 24, of Great Yarmouth took home $75,000 at poker competition in February.

The off-shore worker beat celebrities including Gun ‘N Roses guitarist Slash, German tennis player Boris Becker and former England striker Teddy Sheringham at an event in the Bahamas.

Meanwhile, a Norwich band also struck lucky when they won enough money to record an album after a trip to Las Vegas.

At the musicians Rapp and Pete Lee, the Black Sharks won $ 10,000 at the tables and made sure that the famous producer Nick Brine, who worked in the Oasis, Arctic Monkeys and The Stone Roses.

The largest global brand in Paris, Bodog, began his series of 2011 World Series of Poker qualifiers. The Texas Hold’em poker players are invited to participate in multiple tournaments with the possibility of obtaining a seat for the start of the WSOP Main Event on July 7 in Las Vegas.

For as little as $1, players can enter Bodog Poker qualifying tournaments to be in with a chance of heading to Las Vegas, playing poker in the $9,000,000 Main Event and, of course, attending the legendary Bodog parties.

“Bodog has a long history of sending player to the WSOP and we would love another of our players to take a bracelet in 2011,” says Bodog Poker Manager Nicholas Sims. “Most poker players dream of ending up in Vegas partying, with a WSOP bracelet, not to mention the millions of dollars that can be won at WSOP.”

If you think you can’t, think again. Each Bodog poker player to participate in a qualifying tournament is 1 in 25 chance of winning a seat in the WSOP. But that’s not all, all players also benefit from custom Bodog poker experience at home.

Bill that would legalize Internet poker Iowa state seems to have little or no chance of passing in its current form, making Iowa the last to reject state laws regulating gambling line.

However, calculations can be definitively dead. Instead of calculating Likely to edit the report calls rather than gambling on the Internet from Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission, which could give tips on how to improve the bill, and how it might affect the current state of the gaming industry gambling.

According to supporters of the bill, somewhere around 150,000 Iowans currently play online poker for real money. If the state were able to regulate online poker and keep that play on an in-state network, it is estimated that such a site could generate as much as $30 million in new tax revenue for Iowa each year.

The Iowa bill was less expensive and more focused than bills in other states, such as the one that was eventually vetoed by Governor Chris Christie in New Jersey. The bill would only have regulated online poker, without legalizing other Internet casino games. As with most bills proposed at the state-level, the legislation would only have legalized intrastate poker, meaning Iowans would only be able to play against each other.

However, opposition to the bill was strong from the moment it was proposed. Some Iowa legislators opposed the further expansion of gambling in the state on moral grounds, either opposing to gambling in general, or fearing those minors and those with gambling addictions would be able to gamble more easily if it were available online. Others were more concerned with how the proposed online poker room would affect Iowa’s existing casinos, especially if the legislation were later expanded to include other casino games.

Iowa is just one of many states considering online gambling as a means of increasing tax revenue. Other states are considering legislation such as Florida, New Jersey, Nevada, Hawaii and California.