Kyle Bowker – kwob20

Kyle Bowker aka kwob20 was the first player to break a million chips in last year's WSOP main event. He's also trousered nearly $500k on PokerStars in the last 12 months

Few players, if any, have made such rapid progress in online poker as Kyle Bowker aka kwob20.

He made history last month when becoming the first player ever to win two events in PokerStars’ fifth World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP). He won the $530 seven-card stud hi/lo event and also the $530 Omaha hi/lo limit tournament (for $68k and $103k respectively).

Have a look at the table below. It shows a few of kwob20’s more significant results since the beginning of September 2006. It reveals that in the last two months alone kwob20 has racked up tournament winnings on PokerStars of roughly $300,000.

World Series of Poker

Throw in the fact that this summer Bowker, just 22-years-old and fairly new to the offline game, finished 37th out of a field of nearly 9,000 in the World Series of Poker main event (good for another $247,000), and you can see that we have a legend in the making.

But he doesn’t just play the big tournaments. Poker Verdict’s The Analyst found himself sitting next to kwob20 in a $10 rebuy tourney on Stars just after he won his second WCOOP event, unexpected considering the bankroll he has built up lately.

Bowker is originally from Walton, upstate New York but now lives in New York. He says he plays online for 8-12 hours a day and turned professional last year after winning $100,000 in the big Sunday game on PartyPoker.

His game

Some of his plays in the WSOP main event this year tell us a bit about his game. A key hand developed on day four. Bowker explained what happened in an interview with Pocket Fives:

“I pulled off the bluff of a lifetime. I had Ah-10h and I was the big stack at the table with 600k other guy was deep as well with about 500k. He raised on the button to 20k and I made it 60k from the big blind. He called and the flop came Q-4-2 with one heart. I bet out 80k with nothing and he called. The turn was a 2h and I checked. He bet 250k leaving himself with only 150k, but I still felt like he was weak and would save his last 150 if I pushed. I put him all in and he thought for about 10 minutes and folded a Queen.” The semi-bluff made Bowker the first player in the tournament to break a million chips and made him the chip leader for most of day four – until the spectre of Jamie Gold came into view on the fifth day.

While he’s waiting for the next big offline tournament – he likes to try and qualify for the WPT events – you will find kwob20 in all the big tourneys on PokerStars but he also plays on Full Tilt and UltimateBet, and used to play on PartyPoker when they accepted American players.

He said recently that the players he fears most online are apestyles, foshio and Roothlus. Although he hasn’t had problems dealing with Rizen and JohnnyBax he rates them very highly too.

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