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Cutting his teeth in the private cash games in Texas and his native Illinois, Gavin Griffi n learned all about the need for a professional poker player to be as self-interested as possible. He learned quickly that poker is an individual pursuit in which wins and losses are measured in 11.5-gram clay chips, gold bracelets, and stacks of hundred dollar bills – and nothing else.
Yet despite the warnings of those old school card sharks, Griffi n decided that being interested only in his own well being just wasn’t quite the right fi t for him. Still, success has followed the 26-year old from those early days of his career all around the world; and in February he captured the World Poker Tour’s Borgata Winter Open. It was the fi rst WPT title for Griffi n.
More importantly, Griffi n became a part of poker history. In the process of beating the best Atlantic City had to offer, he became the fi rst player to have won a World Series of Poker bracelet, a European Poker Tour title, and a WPT title. The $1,401,109 fi rst place payday at Borgata was the second of those major wins in less than a year for the former dealer. In April of 2007, Grif- fi n won $1,825,010 at the EPT Grand Final in Monte Carlo in what was at the time the largest tournament ever held outside of the United States.
It was shortly after that win at Monte Carlo that Griffi n fi rst heard about the possibility of being a Triple Crown winner. During the post tournament interviews and media attention, some mentioned to Griffi n that his EPT Grand Final win actually put him in position to be the fi rst should he manage to win a WPT event. But it seems with all the excitement of the win and emotional exhaustion from a week long of grueling poker, the suggestion didn’t sink in with Griffi n.
“Actually, I think it was on Daniel Negreanu’s blog that I read about it. That was the fi rst time I’d even seen anybody mentioning having somebody win all three,” said Griffi n. “And I remember thinking ‘that’d be kinda cool.’”
There are other players who have won on two of poker’s three biggest tours. Roland de Wolfe has both a WPT and EPT win to his credit, but has so far failed to acquire that highly sought after bracelet. Ram Vaswani is in a similar predicament; the English pro earned his WSOP bracelet this past summer to go along with his eight EPT fi nal tables and one title, the EPT Dublin, but he’s without a WPT win.
“I thought de Wolfe would be the fi rst to do it, since he’s already got the WPT and EPT titles. I mean there are only a dozen or so EPT events each year and 20 or so WPT events, but there are 55 WSOP events. By no means is a bracelet easy to win, but there are simply more events and more chances.”
Still Griffi n was thinking it would be cool to be the fi rst to pull off the feat, and after busting out of the EPT’s PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, he told his girlfriend Kristen he wanted to return home to focus on capturing that WPT title.
“After the Bahamas, I told Kristen I wanted to be the fi rst,” admitted Griffi n, who lives on the West Coast. “Now she’ll probably tell you that I was just trying to get out of helping with our move, but I consider that more of a bonus than anything.”
Skipping out on packing and unpacking boxes obviously paid off in a big way for Griffi n. Besting the 507 players at Borgata, Griffi n claimed his spot in poker’s history books and made good on a goal he’d set for himself only a month earlier.
The win at the WPT Borgata event was impressive in the manner in which Griffi n came out on top. Early in the second day he began to chip up and soon found himself amongst the chip leaders, where he stayed for the remainder of the tournament.
“I always go into a tournament thinking I’m going to win,” said Griffi n, echoing the sentiment voiced by any pro worth his salt. “It was really toward the end of that second day when I started to climb up in chips that I felt like I had some control of the tournament.”
At the end of that fateful second day, with 563,000 chips Griffi n was on top of the 99 remaining players – he was 86,000 chips ahead of his nearest competitor, Noah Schwartz, and 142,000 ahead of David Tran, who sat in third. Day 3 would be more of the same, not just for Griffi n, but for Schwartz and Tran as well.
While Griffi n didn’t fi nish the third day as the overall chip leader, he was comfortably in fourth place as one of only four players stacked over 1,000,000 in chips. Also included in that group were Schwartz and Tran. The 27 remaining players included some more solid players. Justin Bonomo, Men Nguyen, Nam Le, and Lee Watkinson all found themselves among the fi nal 27. Still Griffi n found himself near the top of the leaderboard and in control of his own fate.
The fourth day saw 21 players eliminated and set the stage for the WPT’s six-handed fi nal table. As Griffi n bagged his chips at the end of the night, he looked at the fi ve other remaining players and felt confi dent that he was still in control. He sat second in chips to Tran, and with 5,105,000 he was only 166,000 behind.
“I don’t know that I was concerned, but I defi nitely didn’t like that Tran had position on me. But he’d had position on me since we were ten handed,” said Griffi n, who was in the fourth seat, two to the right of Tran. “But he wasn’t the only one I was worried about.”
Joining Tran and Griffi n at the fi nal table were Thomas Hare (2,851,000), Schwartz (1,320,000), Watkinson (397,000) and the short-stacked Ervin Prifti (289,000).
“I knew that Lee would be a factor, same thing for Noah. But Lee doubled up once and then busted. Noah never got anything going and went out soon after. They both got unlucky,” said Griffi n. Watkinson fi nished 5th and Schwartz 4th. It was then, with play three-handed, that Griffi n thought he really might not win.
“I actually thought I was going to fi nish third at that point. I couldn’t win a pot while Thomas and David were building their stacks.”
“Thomas was being pretty aggressive and was making standard three-times-thebig- blind raises before the fl op and was following those up with pot-sized continuation bets after the fl op. So I started just calling his raises; I knew if he fl opped anything I was going to get paid off.” Sure enough that’s exactly how Griffi n would get to heads up.
After calling Hare’s pre-fl op raise of 180,000, Griffi n checked when the fl op came Ac 9c 7c and Hare moved all in with top and bottom pair but found himself well behind Griffi n’s made fl ush. The hand crippled Hare and propelled Griffi n to an epic heads-up battle that would last 48 hands.
After nearly two hours of play and numerous lead changes, Griffi n eliminated Tran when his Qs Jc outraced Tran’s Ks 8s. Griffi n was a WPT champion and pushed his career tournament winnings to just under $4.5 million.
The entire tournament, including the fi nal table, played out for Griffi n with some striking similarities to his win at Monte Carlo ten months earlier. Just like at Borgata, he found himself fl ying under the radar in the early days of play, but by the end of Day 3 he was among the chip leaders. When the fi nal table began, Griffi n was in good shape.
“That fi nal table was really similar [to Borgata],” recalled Griffi n. “I was chipleader from 25 players until the fi nal table. Then, just like Borgata, we were three or four-handed and I was near the bottom in chips and had to claw my way up.” The fi nal table featured more tough competition in Andy Black, Ram Vaswani, and eventual runner-up Marc Karam.
But unlike Borgata, it wasn’t only Grif- fi n’s strong play that was earning him all of the attention; rather it was an unselfi sh act that Griffi n knew could never benefi t him directly – only others, including somebody very close to Griffi n.
Known for changing his hairstyle and/or color for no apparent reason, Griffi n had been sporting a pink dye job the entire tournament. Yes, pink.
“I dyed my hair pink last February,” admitted Griffi n, almost bragging.
So the pink dye job was actually months old by the time he arrived in Monte Carlo, but as he climbed the ladder throughout the tournament, the live update teams in place made constant mention of, and took endless photos of, the pink ’do and Griffi n’s reasons behind it. It was then that people began to learn that Griffi n’s display was one of support and admiration for his girlfriend Kristen and a cause that is very dear to her.
“My girlfriend was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 20. She asked me if I wanted to do the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer with her. So to raise awareness, and hopefully some money, for that we dyed my hair pink.” The Avon Walk for Breast Cancer is a 2-day, 39-mile walk in cities across the United States to help raise money to allow medically under-insured women and men with breast cancer to receive medical attention and support.
The day before the fi nal table, Poker- Stars made an offer to Griffi n to don the company’s logo in exchange for compensation, a standard practice at this stage of any major tournament. Remembering the advice that his earliest poker teachers gave him, Griffi n would have been wise to take the free money, smile, and wear the PokerStars golf shirt. Instead, Griffi n politely turned the offer down, wanting to ensure that his pink hair, and therefore the Avon Foundation Walk, would get as much of the media attention as possible.
Wanting to help and wanting to get their logo on the likeable Griffi n, PokerStars revamped their offer on the basis of a donation to the Avon Foundation. Griffi n gladly accepted, ensuring Kristen’s worthwhile cause received some much needed publicity, as well as donations from players around the world.
“They came back with another offer of a $15,000 donation to the Avon Foundation,” said Griffi n. “And they also set up an account on PokerStars to let other players make a donation to the cause. All in all, we ended up raising about $34,000 with the help of PokerStars and their players.”
After capturing the EPT Grand Final title, Griffi n kept the pink hair through the WSOP-Europe events in London last September. He also had the pink locks as he and Kristen started their 39-mile walk in Los Angeles.
“We didn’t quite make the entire 39 miles,” said Griffi n. “My knees were shot at the end of each day and that made it pretty uncomfortable. On the second day we walked for the fi rst ten miles before I had to stop at one of the medical tents. They wrapped my knees up so we could continue.”
“We did as much as we could, but I don’t think I could do it again. I’d like to be involved again but I’m going to have to fi nd a different way to do it.”
Despite the physical pain, Griffi n was more than happy to be involved and glad that he managed to get some attention for a cause so near to him. “Both Kristen and I received countless emails about the hair from people who were affected by breast cancer or even [other] cancers thanking us. It’s been pretty awesome.”
Griffi n also took something else from the win in Monte Carlo – a sense of validation that he belonged with the best players in the world. “I hadn’t really had any success in any of the Main Event type tournaments. I think I had gone 23 or 24 WPT events without even cashing, so there was certainly a real confi dence boost there."
The Borgata win, though, does give him a decision to make. As is the WPT custom, each tournament winner gets free entry to the WPT championship at Bellagio in April. That tournament is scheduled to run April 19 – 26 while the EPT Grand Final is April 12 – 17; he could theoretically play both, but admits he’d be exhausted from the trans-Atlantic fl ights.
“I’d love to be able to play both, but I want to make sure I’m in a good spot to win,” said Griffi n. “I’ll probably end up playing both, but if I go deep at Monte Carlo, who knows what will happen. I haven’t entirely made up my mind yet.”
Now with another major tournament win on his resume, Griffi n’s confi dence is even higher. He’s proven his poker prowess on two continents and three of poker’s biggest stages. Making it even sweeter is that Kristen is nearing an important milestone.
“She’s been in remission for almost fi ve years now, which is huge. Once you hit fi ve years, the chances of getting it again drop signifi cantly. So we’re both excited and really hopeful.”
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