Just over a year ago, not many in the live poker circuit were familiar with the name Thomas Middleton, but his online poker alias “hitthehole” had been successfully grinding the virtual tournament felt for years. It wasn’t until September of 2013 that he really began to garner the notice of his professional poker playing peers, particularly across Europe, when he took down the title at the EPT Season X Barcelona Main Event for €942,000. He hasn’t struck gold since then, but he’s still raking in 5-figure cashes on a regular basis, including two final table finishes at PokerStars worth a combined $81,100 (£43,523) in two days.
OnlinePokerRealMoney.co.uk tries to dispel some legal confusions stemming from passage of George Bush's UIGEA of 2006 . Federal status seems to depend on interpretation of the wire act and other laws which were crafted many years ago and which remained high level in nature. The United Kingdom has much clearer laws including their own real money gambling commission .
The UK poker pro success over the weekend was commendable. He started things off by entering two $82 NL Holdem 6-Max Hyper Turbo events, finishing 64th and 46th respectively for minimal cashes of $132 and $175. Nothing to write home about there, but what happened next was fairly remarkable. Middleton paid $530 to enter the WCOOP 2nd Chance 40, another NL Holdem 6-Max event at PokerStars, where he finished 4th place for an impressive $20,370 (£12,469). “GripDsNuts” would go on to win that event for $55,290.
The British poker pro finished out his Saturday evening by collecting two more smaller cashes of $212 and $458 in The Big $55, $90k GTD (eventually won by “Stephouuuu89” for $23,053) and a $109 NL Holdem Turbo valued at $20k GTD (won by 2014 WSOP November Niner Jorryt “TheCleaner11” van Hoof for $17,578).
When the sun rose over the UK on Sunday morning, Tom Middleton was nowhere near finished with his progressive run at the world’s largest online poker room. He finished in the money in 5 ore events yesterday, two for 3-figures, 2 more for 4-figures and the last for the largest 5-figure cash he’s seen from his online poker exploits since winning $53,000 (£32,444) at Event #30 of FTOPS XXVI last month. (Yes, just last month, for those who may not have caught the sarcasm dripping from that remark.)
In his biggest score of the weekend, Tom “hitthehole” Middleton survived a field of 1,068 just long enough to land in 3rd place. That impressive deep run earned the Brit $50,730 (£31,054). He was succeeded by “vladobu6i” and “Negriin”, the latter of which went on the win the $530 Sunday 500 event (guaranteed at $300k, but popular enough to draw a 534k prize pool) for $92,168.
All told, Tom Middleton grinded the virtual felt at PokerStars out of $75,343 (£46,121) across 10 events over the weekend. According to stat trackers, the young UK poker pro now has $5,193,308 (£3,179,136) in online poker tournament cashes, and another $1,925,926 (£1,178,974) in live tournament winnings, the bulk of which came from the EPT Barcelona win of a year ago.
Another UK poker pro who had a lucrative weekend at PokerStars was Daryl “DJG1989” Green. The Brit joined a field of 2,686 on Saturday to participate in 2014 WCOOP Event #39, a $215 NL Holdem 6-Max with $300k GTD (building a $527,200 prize pool). Part of the final three, Green and his companions, “dasRektum$” and “treven7”, made a deal to chop the pot. It turned out to be a great move for Daryl, who raked in $63,989 (£39,171) for a 3rd place finish, as opposed to the $44,812 (£27,432) he would have earned otherwise.