Player Focus: PURPLEPILS99

By Simon Hopper

22nd August 2008

his total winnings on PokerStars & Full Tilt combined now total well over $1.2 million

Evan Parkes is the latest MTT machine off the Canadian production line...

Canada has produced some of the worlds top online tournament players in recent years; the likes of Sorel Mizzi, Matt Kay, Russell Carson & Nenad Medic all spring to mind. Now Evan ‘PURPLEPILS99’ Parkes looks set to give them a real run for their money.

Aged just 18, Parkes has been on such a tear recently that he has shot to #1 in the Pocket Fives Canadian rankings & 9th in the world after some substantial scores in the biggest MTTs around.

Hailing from Vancouver, his total winnings on PokerStars & Full Tilt combined now total well over $1.2 million after a run from April – July 2008 that most of us could only dream of.

He has been well known in tournament circles since 2007, when in October he came 3rd in Stars’ Wednesday Hundred Fifty Grand for $18,448 before a 5th in the Super Tuesday the following month for a further $17,767. New years Eve was a sign of things to come as he took down the Full Tilt $1k Monday (where he plays as ‘NEONPILS99’) for a cool $41,850.

April 2008 was when he started to make his real charge up the rankings with total prizes of over $40,000 in just 3 events, the FT $90k GTD (2nd for $16,051), the Stars $100 re-buy (3rd for $12,273) & the Stars Nightly Hundred Grand (4th for $11,824).
Parkes is similar to Moorman in that he is still lacking that one major victory to propel him into genuine superstardom (on his P5s profile he says he ‘pwns Moorman1 for a living’). But he came seriously close in May’s FTOPS; Event #16 (the NLHR 6-max) saw him wade through a field 1,072 to final table, only to bust out in 3rd for by far his biggest ever cash of $112,147.

By now the P5s rankers were starting to take notice and he further solidified his position in July with a 3rd in the Stars $200 re-buys for $27,522 & an outright victory in the FT $90k GTD for $24,133.

As of May 2008 (and his big FTOPS score) Parkes now has a regular blog in Bluff Magazine, an indication of how far he has come. He has no live cashes to date, obviously because of his age, but we can assume that he is another ready to tear up Vegas in a few years time. For now though, we are sure he will see some more major online scores coming his way.