Brad Booth: In The Cards

Image by: Jason Matthew Henderson

“Hey, cutie,” purrs the voice on the other end of the phone line, “it’s Brad.” In most circumstances, that greeting would elicit an abrupt dial tone, but nailing down an interview with Brad Booth – a.k.a. “Yukon Brad” – is an exercise in persistence, given his insane schedule.

Once christened by 11-time World Series of Poker winner Phil Hellmuth as “the best unknown no-limit hold ’em player in the world,” the 31-year-old Vancouver resident’s schedule has him hitting up tournaments and cash games across the globe, from Las Vegas to Melbourne, Australia.

We finally meet at the Cactus Club in Richmond, a couple of days after the March 2008 Canadian Open Poker Championship in Calgary, where Booth came in second, winning a cool 50 Gs. He emerges from a gigantic yellow Hummer in flip-flops, loose jeans and a black hoodie emblazoned with logos for Full Tilt Poker, an online site he’s paid to support. A large gold ring with multiple diamonds catches the light as he offers his right hand, delivers his “cutie” line again and decorously leans in for a two-cheek peck.

You might say the six-foot-plus Booth was born to play poker. Blessed with an inscrutable face, he quit school at 16, unbeknownst to his parents, who had promised him a car upon graduation. Every morning Booth would head out to a job at a pizza parlour, earning money to fund nightly sessions in private card rooms and fooling his parents into believing he was either in class or studying late. He got the car and left books behind.

“I’m one of the few players in poker who has never read a poker book,” he con­fesses. “I’ve never read a book of any kind, if you can believe it. Not many people know that.”

At age 19, follow­ing his mother’s death, Booth fled from his hometown of Mission, B.C., to Haines Junction in the Yukon (hence the nickname). In 2005 he moved to Las Vegas for two years, and for 18 months he lived at the Bellagio Hotel. Last August he settled in Vancouver.

Travelling the world and rubbing shoulders with poker-playing celebs such as Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Tilly doesn’t mean life is perfect, he insists.

“Every couple of days someone comes up to me and says, ‘You’re living the dream.’ I look at them right away and I say, ‘Hey, are you married?’ They say, ‘Yeah, I’m married.’ I say, ‘Hey, you got kids?’ ‘Yeah, I got kids.’ ” His face remains stoic, unreadable. “I say, ‘Guess what? In my eyes, you’re living the dream.’ So the grass is always greener on the other side. Life is what you make it.”

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