The United Kingdom & Ireland Poker Tour in London is the biggest tournament Brett Angell has ever won. He managed to beat Fabrizio Fuchs at the final table to get the £115k first place prize. The first prize is long awaited by Brett who was defeated recently in Nottingham leg of UKIPT2 and Genting Poker Series in Newcastle. His overall earnings from poker tournaments are now $338k. Before he won the IKPT in London, his biggest win was in Nottingham in 2011 where he took £80,000 which he spent for a new house for him and his girlfriend in Marske.
He is now back in shape as he won a £24,000 for getting to second place in a New Castle tournament this August.
Brett Angell is thirty one years old and works as an IT specialist in Teesside. He is an expert in system analysis at the IT company A-One.
To him, in order to win such a big poker event, one needs to know how to observe and analyze the opponent, to know how to calculate well and of course, a little bit of luck.
Brett says he likes to test his skills and not so much to focus on the gambling side of poker. “A lot of people see it as gambling but for me, it’s more a game of skill with luck involved.” He comments that if he plays snooker versus a professional snooker player, he will most likely lose all games. But if he plays poker versus the best poker players in the world, the luck factor will bring some games in his favor.
He first got interested in trying poker when he saw his bigger brother play. He started visiting Gala Casino in Teesside Park, playing a few days a week. He went to school at the Stokesley School and later at Laurence Jackson School when his family moved to Guisborough. He has always been interested in information technology and mathematics.
There are many players who like playing online, but not Brett. He is fond of the classic face to face match-ups. In his opinion, his most valuable skills in poker are his knowledge of math and his ability to analyze the behavior of players. He says he is a recreational player and likes that as it does not put that much pressure than if playing professionally.
He shares that a number of his friends do play poker and win good money out of it, but he himself considers it unstable and unpredictable to be done full-time. He jokes that “a ‘professional poker player’ doesn’t look too good on a mortgage application!”
The UKIPT event was joined by a number of professionals in the poker scene. Vladimir Troyanovkiy, Rasmus Agerskov, Caicai Huang and many others were some of the well-known figures who despite having a number of tournament wins, could not get to the top this time.
