Who needs education? Certainly not Dan Carter!

The 20-year-old who failed his college courses is now making £200,000 a year playing poker and he’s enjoying every minute of it.

Carter, from Prestbury near Cheltenham, has been playing for two years and has gone on to be ranked 18th in Europe, according to local paper the Gloucestershire Echo.

Once ranked as high as seventh, Carter has won £400,000 in the past two years, including £90,000 at the World Heads-up championship, where he was runner-up.

"I'm quite a risk-averse person. I don't really gamble," he said.

"I don't play the lottery or scratch cards. I don’t care how much I win or lose as long as I can make a living off this game for the rest of my life. Poker takes five minutes to learn and a lifetime to master."

Carter says that he picked up poker from his step father who he saw playing it one day, although he says that his step father was not particularly good.

While he doesn’t mind having the tag of ‘school drop out’ you quickly begin to realise that Carter is streets ahead of your average 20 year old and when he talks about the game of poker you see why.

He says “Bad players blame luck but don't understand probabilities. There are so many compulsive gamblers it's depressing. But if they weren't there, I wouldn't make a living.”

A unique character Dan’s mother says he had a special talent for numbers from a young age though many had pigeon holed him as being slow. “He had delayed speech but he knew his numbers by the time he was two or three. When he started school he couldn't speak but he could tell the time using his legs” she said.

His online name is lucky_scrote and his favourite poker game is Heads-up, according to his profile on Poker pages.

Print version