Following Barny Boatman’s victory in the EPT Paris Main Event earlier this year, it didn’t take long for PokerStars to snap him up as their newest ambassador. But the truth is, Boatman has been an ambassador for poker for a lot longer than a couple of months.
He may qualify for seniors’ events these days, but Boatman’s appetite for innovation and enthusiasm for the game is something that remains unchanged since his earliest experiences in the home games of his native London.
He was one of the first players to voluntarily expose his hole cards for TV, a pioneer of online gaming in the earliest days of the internet, and of course the co-founder of The Hendon Mob, the site that would become the unimpeachable record of tournament poker results around the world.
He won the first tournament he ever played, and went on to rack up WSOP bracelets, an EPT Championship and more. Not bad for someone who started out as a 7-Card Stud specialist.
We were lucky enough to explore all these stories and more in the latest instalment of The Interview - our series of in-depth conversations with the biggest names in the game.
Click above to watch the full conversation, taking in topics including:
- His childhood, school days and introduction to poker
- The founding of The Hendon Mob, and how it grew to become what it is today
- The players he’s most admired, as well as his biggest poker nemesis
- His first trips to Las Vegas, including playing for three days straight and deep runs in the WSOP Main Event
- ‘That’ hand against Eric Afriat at EPT Paris, and how he played Day 5 without having slept
- His love for the European Poker Tour, and plans to reunite the original Hendon Mob at an upcoming event
Boatman is our kind of guy; the type of man who can talk us through the intricacies of extracting value from a turned full house, minutes after quoting Antonio Gramsci and Oscar Wilde (look them up, they’re not poker players).
Watch the video at the top of this page to join Barny and PokerOrg’s Craig Tapscott for the latest episode of The Interview.
