2009 WSOP November Nine: Kevin Schaffel
by Chad Holloway of Predictem.com
Kevin Schaffel, a member of the 2009 World Series of Poker November Nine (Currently 6th with 12,390,000 chips), is a 51 year-old semi-professional poker player from Coral Gables, Florida. A life-long resident of Florida, Schaffel ran his family's direct mailing and printing business for 30 years before recently deciding to close the doors. It was at that time he decide to take poker, a game he had been playing since he was 11, a bit more serious:
“For the last year and a half, I’ve been playing poker. I had been successful over the years playing cash games, typically $10-$20 no-limit . . . I found out that (playing for a living) wasn’t so easy. I started running really bad at the beginning of the year, and I had never experienced running bad for such a long period of time. I needed to show so much patience just to limit the losses when I was running bad.”
Schaffel finished 324th out of 6,844 players in the 2008 WSOP Main Event for $32,166. This would pale in comparison to his success in the 2009 WSOP Main Event:
“The patience I’ve had to learn over the last four months — of throwing cards away every hand for hours upon hours because there was just nothing there to play — it really helped me in the main event,” said Schaffel. “I just never felt pressured to push with a bad hand. I just stayed calm and waited, and there were enough cards to get me through.”
Needless to say, with sponsorship from Poker Stars and a guaranteed $1.2 million, Schaffel's life is going to take a dramatic turn. The recent divorcee with two children in college, Schaffel recognizes how his life might change:
“I’m renting a house from a guy who lives most of the year in Costa Rica, but his kids come back and forth, and sometimes they come when he’s not there. It’s just a little uncomfortable being there … You never know when someone’s going to walk in. I think one of the first things I’m going to do is to get a nice small townhouse at some point . . . Obviously, this is life-changing right now, and I just can’t believe it.”
Online poker tournaments can be life altering events. Each week, many of the biggest card rooms around the net offer up everything from 100K tourneys to Poker Stars famous "Sunday Million". Sure, many enter and the odds are thin, but SOMEBODY has to win and why can't that somebody be you? Check out our list of GOOD tourneys below and take your shot at something huge, like winning enough loot to buy a Ferrari or pay your house off!
Poker Stars Sunday Million - Starts each Sunday at 1:30PM EST. Entry fee is $215 U.S. The million in prizes are GUARANTEED and 1st place is always over $100K! Winning this tourney would be life altering! What are you waiting for? Take your shot THIS WEEK!
Absolute Poker $150K Weekly - Plays every Saturday at 16:30PM EST (1:30PM EST). Cost to enter: $500+$30.
Ultimatebet Poker - Take your shot at their 200K tourney which plays every Sunday at 5:30PM EST. Buy-in is $200 + $15.
Full Tilt Fifty-Fifty Tournament - Plays each evening at 21:20 ET with 1st place always being worth AT LEAST $9500!
Cheap Online Poker Tournaments - Tourneys with low buy-ins but good enough payouts to make it worth your while!
Introduction to Tournament Poker - Loki covers everything from the buy in to prize payouts!
Cash Games vs. Tournaments - Hank Cashman talks about the difference between the two and notes that just because you're good at one doesn't mean that you'll win at the other.