April 2007 By Gavin Griffin

Gavin Griffin is a twenty something poker player from the US who is easily spotted on the circuit with his excellent pink hair. In April he earned permanent poker respect when he took down the PokerStars EPT Grand Final…

April is the month when everyone who’s anyone in European poker descends on Monte Carlo for the PokerStars EPT Grand Final. A record 706 players paid the €10,000 buy-in, creating a prize pool of over €6.6m and the richest tournament ever to be held outside Las Vegas.

In the end it was a North American affair, as 25-year-old American Gavin Griffin took home the €1.8m top prize after beating last year’s fourth place finisher, Marc Karam from Canada.

Griffin, who won his seat on PokerStars for $240, is not your average internet qualifier. The youngest ever World Series bracelet winner in 2004 ($3,000 Pot Limit Hold’em) and with eight WSOP cashes to his name, Griffin was finding it difficult to emulate his early success.

“It was like a validation of my career as a poker player,” he says. “I had gone through a stretch of not enjoying much success in major tourmanents, so it was nice to finally win a huge event like that. It felt like it was coming for a while, and to come through it was a great feeling.”

According to Griffin, his approach to tournament poker remained unchanged. “I don't really have a set strategy going into any tournament. I adjust to whatever’s going on at the time, to the different players or the different atmosphere. I didn’t really go in saying, ‘oh I had to do this to win this tournament’. Things just worked out right for me.”

After seeing off a difficult final table that included Ram Vaswani and Andy Black, alongside aggressive young Scandinavians Soren Kongsgaard and Kristian Kjondal, he found himself up against a formidable opponent in Marc Karam. The Canadian pro had managed the remarkable feat of reaching the final table of EPT Monte Carlo two years running and made much of the running in the heads-up battle.

“Marc played really well. At first he seemed like a tight player who was going to avoid me because I had a bunch of chips. Then all of a sudden I started to see him changing gears and making different plays, getting involved a little more often. I really started to respect him as a player. He’s very good and played really well the whole tournament.”

The tournament culminated with Griffin, who had a slight chip lead, aggressively betting his semi-bluff draw with K5, on a flop of 2,3,4. Karam moved all-in with 74, and Griffin hit one of his many outs – a King – on the river. This was characteristic play from the American who honed his game online at PokerStars.

“I’m always looking to take any edge I can get,” he says. “I have the philosophy that you can’t really pass up any edge. I don’t think anybody is good enough to pass up even a 57:43, especially if there’s money in the pot already. A lot of online players have that kind of same attitude, because we play at a little bit of a higher volume than some of the older guys who have always played live. If they bust of a tournament, they’ve got to go home. Whereas if you’re playing online, you’re playing in six or seven tournaments and if you bust out of one there’s another registering in 15 minutes.”

After earning his seat online, Griffin clearly enjoyed his trip across the Atlantic. “It was incredible. The room we played in was easily the nicest tournament poker room I’ve ever been in. The starry sky effect of the ceiling, the wall of windows overlooking the bay – it was beautiful. The whole combination, the whole atmosphere was awesome.”

Despite his dedication to the game and prowess on the felt, Gavin’s trademark shock of pink hair reveals his true passion elsewhere. “Pink is the official colour of breast cancer charities in the United States. My girlfriend Kristen and I did the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer, which is a 39 mile walk over two days. We raised roughly $35,000 to donate to the charity.

Along with that, the pink hair has given me a chance to let people know what we were doing, and the importance of the charity itself. People say things like, ‘ah man your hair is so stupid’, and I’ll tell them and they’ll say ‘ah that’s a great idea, it’s a good cause.”

Bold, determined and passionate, Griffin looks set to continue his poker success into 2008.

The 2008 EPT Grand Final takes place at the Monte Carlo Bay Hotel, 12-17 April, 2008, buy-in €10,000. You can qualify now on PokerStars from $5.50

Check back tomorrow for the next Year In Review blog