Snooker star
Matthew Stevens has won $500,000 (£260,000) after swapping the green
baize for the Texas Holdem poker table.
The Carmarthen potter who
only started playing the card game
Texas Holdem
18 months ago won the UK's richest
poker tournament.
Stevens beat tennis star
Yevgeny Kafelnikov and darts champion Phil Taylor in the televised final
of the 888.com Pacific Poker Open.
The 27-year-old has flown out
to New York on a holiday to spend some of his winnings due to the
exchange rate.
Before he left Stevens said:
"This is absolutely unbelievable and I am in a complete daze.
"It's a dream to win a
Texas Holdem
poker tournament having only been
playing for a short time.
"I was quietly confident
going into the final but if at the start of the tournament you'd have
told me I'd be winning it, I'd have thought you were barmy."
The final, screened on Sunday
night, was pre-recorded and Stevens has already set about spending some
of the money.
Stevens, who is ranked the
sixth best snooker player in the world, became a father earlier this
year.
His agent Brendan Parker said
due to the current exchange rate between the pound and the dollar
Stevens was away this week in New York.
"It's somewhere he had always
wanted to go so he is away on a week's holiday spending some of his
winnings," he explained.
To get to the final Stevens
had to beat poker professionals and online qualifiers that made up a
field of 108 hopefuls.
World darts champion Taylor
finished second and Kafelnikov, who has announced his retirement from
tennis to concentrate on professional poker, came third.
Taylor said: "I couldn't have
been beaten by a better person than Matthew. This tournament has been
one of the highlights of my life."
