Yorkshire lawyer wins almost £90,000 after finishing second in national poker league

Andrew Bak played in tournaments across the length and breadth of the country – clocking up thousands of miles but also winning thousands of pounds. The 34-year-old finished second in the 2022 Grosvenor Casinos National Poker League, earning almost £90,000 along the way. The second-place finish also earned him £20,000-worth of free tournament entries.

Mr Bak, who also writes a chess column for The Yorkshire Post and was part of the Yorkshire team that won the county championship in 2016, has been playing poker for 12 years but only decided to get involved in the league after finding himself on the leaderboard during an early tournament.

He said: "It is not something I set out to take part in - but once I started getting points after doing well in the early competitions, I thought it was worth going for. Since then I have been travelling as far south as Reading and as far north as Edinburgh taking part in as many tournaments as I could manage.

"Finishing runner-up the National Poker League has been a fantastic achievement especially when you consider there are so many competitors who play the game full time. What has pleased me most is my consistency in racking up the points.

“Sitting at the poker table for hours on end and travelling all over Britain can be gruelling, so it has been important to get myself into a routine of eating properly and getting the right amount of sleep. And, of course, I also have to factor in my work. Actually, there are a lot of similarities with my job as a lawyer where I have to negotiate to get what I want out of any given situation.”

Andrew, who lives in Bradford and is a big fan of the Bradford Bulls, added: "I love the psychology of poker. The buzz of sitting around the table with a group of your rivals holding cards and trying to figure out what they have. Also, there is an incredible adrenalin rush if you run a big bluff and pull it off when you force an opponent to throw the winning hand.”

The tournament’s buy-ins range from £250 to £2,000 and points are awarded for how well players do in addition to how much each competition costs to enter.

His biggest payday was £30,000 when he split the first place prize with three others in Blackpool in November, and came third in another competition in Blackpool a few days later to scoop £9,600. In total over the last year, Mr Bak has won £89,587 in prize money.

And it’s come in handy as attending the events means he has done more than 15,000 miles in his Ford Fiesta this year.

The 2022 National Poker League prize fund for the 170 tournaments at 23 Grosvenor casinos nationwide totalled almost £20 million. Mr Bak is now looking to go one better next year when the new league starts on January 11.

A GUKPT spokesman says: "Andrew has done brilliantly well and is a deserved runner-up of the National Poker League. He has been sensational the whole year and we wish him well for 2023."