If you spend any time on the poker circuit, you’re going to run into the same players over and over again. In fact, the closest you can get to a locked-in bet for the World Poker Tour is that Eric Afriat will show up with his trademark smile. Afriat was in especially good spirits on Thursday for Day 1A of the WPT Playground Championship, as he got to sleep in his own bed.
“I was born and raised in Montreal,” Afriat said. “I only live 20 minutes away.”
Sleeping in one’s bed during a $3,500 WPT Main Event is something rarely accomplished, but when you rack up 28 cashes, eight final tables, and three titles, you’re bound to be doing something different.
Eric Afriat and Lynn Gilmartin at the 2024 WPT Choctaw ChampionshipAnother POY campaign
This season, so far, Afriat finished runner-up to James Mackey at the Choctaw Championship, 19th at the May Playground event, and turned in two top 100 finishes in the WPT Prime Voyage Championship and the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown. Those results leave him tied for fourth place in the Player of the Year race with David Ko.
He’s just 250 points behind leader, Australian breakout player, Travis Endersby, who finished second and third in the WPT Australia Championship and WPT Prime Gold Coast Championship, respectively.
“Honestly, it’s the fourth time in the last ten years that I’ve gone for Player of the Year,” said Afriat. “There are three more stops this year and I’m going to go full force.”
The end-of-year schedule lines up in Afriat’s favor with two events in Florida on the horizon – bestbet Scramble in Jacksonville and Seminole Rock ‘N Roll Poker Open in Ft. Lauderdale. Afriat maintains an apartment in South Florida and spends extensive time in the Sunshine State.
“I had a good first half of the year, then in June it just stopped,” Afriat added. “So, we’ll see what happens until the end of the year.”
Afriat and Darren Elias in early action.
The poutine on the fries
But winning a title in Montreal is the ultimate goal for him. “That would be the icing on the cake for me,” Afriat said. “I’ve final tabled twice here – I got third in the event that Ema (Zajmovic) won in 2017 and that one stung for a while.”
“It would just be great (to win here),” he said while on break. “I’m not running great right now but luck changes fast.”
When asked what he likes about Canadian fields, Afriat joked, “Canadian fields are for sure a classier bunch of guys,” he said. "We have a better poker etiquette – you know, we Canadians are more easy-going, a little less tense than other stops on the circuit.”
All photos courtesy of the World Poker Tour.
