Nottingham-based poker pro Julian Thew has had a remarkable rise as a leading player on the professional circuit and he may well be rewarded with an award at the inaugural PokerStars.com EPT Awards Ceremony to be staged in Barcelona on 9th September.
A total of nine awards in different categories will be handed out to players who stood out in the fourth season of the European Poker Tour. So far nominees have been announced in three of the nine categories.
Thew has been nominated for the Best Performance Award for his first place at the EPT Baden Classic back in November last year which earned the Irish-born player more than half a million pounds.
It was Thew’s first EPT poker title and he had to overcome a strong final table line-up including Denes Kalo (who has also been nominated for the Best Newcomer Award, Thierry Van den Berg and Thomas Lawson. Marcel Luske, Barry Greenstein and Annette Obrestad also took part indicating the strength of the field. His win in Baden made him 8th on the EPT’s all time biggest winners list.
Since then Thew has also become Britain’s 9th highest earning poker player in history with career earnings reaching nearly £1.3 million. At the age of 39 the player nicknamed ‘YoYo’ has plenty of time to climb up that list by cashing in more major tournaments.
Thew has won four international poker events since Baden and is very much an in-form player as he took the Deep Stack Extravaganza title in Las Vegas just over a month ago adding another £130,000 to his fortune.
Thew has been playing poker since a teenager but revealed that he was inspired to take up the game seriously after receiving a book on poker as a Christmas present from his wife. He began competing properly in 1999 both online and offline and his rise as a professional was helped with sponsorship from William Hill bookmakers.
On the poker table Thew is an aggressive and tactical player. However, away from the table he is one of the nicest and well-liked players on the professional poker circuit. After winning in Baden he bought the English players that had remained to watch him win, five bottles of champagne.
Thew will find out whether or not he has won the Best Performance Award at the EPT Awards Ceremony held at the Casino Barcelona on Tuesday 9th September. He may well even find he has been nominated for more awards as the nominees for six of the categories have yet to be announced.
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