Australian collegiate dropout Malcolm Trayner has earned a pretty penny in his first three months of playing poker, cashing in AU$100,000 (or US$69,190).
The 20-year old had attended the esteemed academic institution Marker College before transferring to Macquarie University. However, he made the decision to drop out a mere month after school started in March 2018. He claimed that the bold move had nothing to do with poker, but rather, he had just wanted to earn some money.
Not long after leaving the university, he began working in a local bar for AU$25 (or US$17.30) per hour. He was playing poker on the side for fun, but all that changed in October 2018 when he realized that he could make a career out of playing the game he was so passionate about and very good at.
The gamble has paid off in spades for Trayner as in his first two months, he had already made AU$10,000 (or US$6,919) playing poker. Then Trayner won AU$90,000 (US$62,271) competing in a World Series of Poker (WSOP) event that happened at the Star Casino in Sydney.
Trayner said this is the win that “got the ball rolling” and that he was merely lucky on that day. There were 1,501 players competing in the aforementioned event, generating a prize pool of AU$600,000 (or US$415,000).
Trayner eventually went on to finish in second place. Before the last round, the last two players made a deal to split their winnings 50/50, which is a usual happening in these kinds of events.
While the young man now spends his days playing high-stakes poker on both online and offline platforms, he admitted that the world of professional gambling is a fickle one.
“I definitely have losing days, weeks, even a month. But when you’re going through long losing streaks, you’ve got to trust in your ability … as long as you’re not the unluckiest person in the world.”
He now has another poker pro helping him as a mentor. He hopes that this will help him to make the best decisions on the table and minimize losses.
Trayner knows that if he makes too many mistakes, there is a fair chance that he would end up going back to college and finishing his degree.
“A lot of people are delusional. They tell themselves they’re a winning player but they never win. Who knows, maybe I could be one.”
