December 2007 By Mike Ellis

Mike Ellis is a hugely successful city trader who left his job for the poker world with an excellent understanding of business and making profit. His knowledge was blindingly obvious when he took down a field of around 300 players to be crowned champion of the prestigious UK Poker Tour at the beginning of December...

Up until December, 2007 hadn’t been a great year in terms of tournaments. I’d been to the World Series in the summer, without much luck over there. The cash games had been going alright and I had been making money most months to pay the bills, but for the tournaments it had been quite a cold year.

It’s just a rumour that I was going to quit tournament poker, but I certainly cut on the amount I was playing, because I felt I was draining money and time away when I’d be better off in the cash games – especially when tournaments involved the expense travelling out of London.

I took the GUKPT Grand Final one stage at a time. I never looked too far ahead – I was always looking at the next goal post and on Day 2 the main target was to get through the day to the final. I knew what chip stack I was aiming for to get to the final with but obviously you have to take it as it goes – one step at a time.

In the early stages of the final table when I was short stacked it was more about staying involved and hoping that something would happen to get me back in the game. After three hours, if you’d asked me my chances of winning, I would have said they were pretty low, but I was patient and got a bit of luck when I needed it with a low stack. When I knocked out Ben Vinson, it was at that point I thought ‘I’ve got a good chance’. Three handed I felt fairly confident that I had a decent chance to win it.

It’s a meaningful amount of money whatever you’ve done in the past or if you’re used to it. Though it’s not an amount of money I’m completely unused to it is certainly significant, and indeed in the context of my new world, which is poker, it is very significant.

For me, it’s business as usual in 2008. I’m not going to change massively the type of games or tournaments I play, though I will probably be able to play a few more tournaments than I had originally budgeted for. This may mean a few extra EPT and WSOP tournaments, but the poker business model I have still requires me to fund the tournaments through cash games and I don’t see that changing.

Check back tomorrow for the next Year In Review blog