WSOP Main Event November Nine: Fernando Pons

Throughout October, Coral Poker will run through each of this year’s November 9, who’ll appear in the 2016 WSOP main event held at the Rio All-Suite Hotel on the 30th October.

With very few live results to his name, nothing much is really known about Fernando Pons, but we’ll take a look anyway.

And that really epitomises the world of poker. While one can earn money beyond their wildest dreams — Daniel Negreanu for example — other players need to hold second jobs to make ends meet. Previous to this year’s WSOP, Pons had made just $14,091 dollars from poker over a four year period. This is just over $3,000 a year, not nearly enough to sustain any form of life-style. It’s only now that poker has paid off, bagging (as you already know) a guaranteed $1 million by making it the WSOP Main Event table. In essence, Pons is the quintessential casual player, who somehow, even to his shock made it to the big-time.

A game that takes little to no priority for Pons

“I play about three-to-five live tournaments per year, I can’t believe this result” was the translated response from Pons when asked how he felt about making it to the final nine. Before entering the WSOP Main Even — held in Barcelona this year — Pons had only ever spent $1000+ on one other tournament, the $1,500 No Limit Hold’em Championship, finishing 56th and winning $ 4,059. Moving forward he entered the no limit Liga Española de Póker tournament on the 18th Jan 2015, finishing 6th and winning a mere, when compared to professional standards, $264. Pulling off a string of similar wins — $608 here, $410 there — it seemed that while poker would payout to Pons, it wouldn’t give him the booty he wanted.

But, to say Pons was desperate for success would not be appropriate. He treated poker like a hobby — one that would eventually pay millions. After a string of somewhat dismal wins, he finally cashed the big-money. $1,000,000. He was a WSOP Main Event finalists, part of the coveted November Nine.

Short stacked by a long way, with just 12 big blinds left overall, it’s unlikely he’ll progress any further than ninth. But would he care? In the eye’s of many he’s already won. “This changed my life. I never imagined it. It’s a dream.” For Pons, it was never about smart strategic play, it was about being in the right tournament, at the right time.