There was one Canadian college student with no tuition fee worries this week – he won more than US$ 1.3-million after seven days of poker in paradise.
Steve Paul-Ambrose (22) emerged in first place Tuesday from a pool of more than 720 players in the Third Annual Poker Stars Caribbean Adventure at the Atlantis Casino Resort on Paradise Island in the Bahamas.
The third-year business and science student won $1,363,100 and captured a $25,000 seat in the World Poker Tour‘s championship tournament, which will be played in Las Vegas in April.
The tournament was organized by Poker Stars.com, the industrys second largest online poker site. Spokesman Scott Womer said the buy-in was $8,000 and “….it’s one of the biggest tournaments out there that people can participate in.”
But Paul-Ambrose only paid $102. The Kingston student earned his seat in the final by winning a series of online competitions through the Poker Stars website after playing online for only two years and only rarely facing opponents across a real table.
The tournament was based on the popular Texas Hold’em version of poker in which players get two cards they must use with five others dealt on the table to come up with the best hand.