Poker News

Britain's top poker player has revealed he used to carry a loaded gun to tournaments.

Dave 'Devilfish' Ulliott, who has won nearly $6 million in his career, says he even fired the weapon once - after a late night game in northern England.

But the 56-year-old, who has spent two spells in jail - for robbery and fighting in his native Hull - claimed he has few regrets about his criminal past.

He said: "Sometimes it’s easier to win the games than to bring the money home, which is why I started carrying a gun.

"It served me well when other players tipped off thieves. One time, back in the 1990s, I was leaving a game in Bradford at five o’clock in the morning. It was winter, freezing cold, and I was carrying a lot of cash.

"As I stepped on to the fire escape with a friend I heard some people whispering, so I took out the gun and fired it into the air.

"Whoever they were, they knocked over a few dustbins as they ran away."

Ulliott boasts 32 WSOP cashes - including a bracelet for the $2,000 pot limit Texas Hold'em event in 1997, in which he won $180,310.
But in an interview to promote his forthcoming autobiography he told FT Magazine that just  a year earlier he was so broke he tried to take a big pot from a man who was dying.

He added: "In 1996, I was playing against an older fellow called Charlie, a nice guy from Liverpool.

"We were fighting over a decent pot, about £3,000. I bet the pot, and Charlie fell off his chair. He’d had a heart attack.

"Today, there’s no way I would have wanted the money under those circumstances, but at the time it was tough.

"I asked whether I had won, but he didn’t answer. I asked again, and thought the pot was mine. But this time Charlie managed to croak to his brother to call the bet. He died later in hospital."

* ‘Devilfish: The Life & Times of a Poker Legend’, by Dave Ulliott, will be published by Viking on September 9