David Haye vs Goliath
David Haye is a former heavyweight boxing champion who is keeping things competitive even after retiring from professional boxing. Recently, he played in the Grosvenor Goliath which is Europe’s largest poker tournament. Moreover, he will be staring in a new poker documentary!
Haye was one of Great Britain’s finest boxers. He started his professional career in 2002 and was competing successfully till 2018.
The London-born boxer held multiple world championship titles in two weight classes. Prior to his professional career, he was also the first British boxer to reach the final of the World Amateur Boxing Championships.
David Haye became a unified cruiserweight world champion in 2008 and won three of four major titles. Moreover, he also founded his own boxing promotional firm in the same year.
He fought several high-caliber fighters in his long-lasting career: Wladimir Klitschko, Nikolai Valuev, Dereck Chisora, and John Ruiz just to name a few.
Now that he has retired from boxing, he was looking for a new challenge. Therefore it’s great to see a former world-class boxer joining the poker community!
David Haye – a poker champion?
After Haye realized that his body could not do what it used to do in the past, he decided to focus on poker. Right after he started playing, he contacted several poker professionals such as David Esfandiari to improve his game as quickly as possible.
He set himself a new challenge: winning Europe’s largest poker tournament. The Goliath is a huge tournament and Haye accepted the challenge. While he has tons of experience in the ring, he had literally zero knowledge about poker.
Therefore he decided to play several hours every day. He didn’t know anything about poker and had to learn the basics to compete in the Goliath.
The Goliath – The Largest Poker Tournament outside of the United States
The Goliath is definitely a proper challenge for the former world champ. It is an annual £125/$150 tournament at Grosvenor Casinos and Haye played in the tournament in 2019.
Last year’s tournament took place in Coventry and a total 0f 9,300 players registered for it. There are several thousands of players every year which makes the tournament extremely appealing to professional players and recreational players alike.
Due to the low buy-in of just £125, most players are able to afford the cost and they can also compete for a prize pool of £930,000. In 2019, the tournament smashed its own 2018 record and became Europe’s largest poker tournament once again.
The 2019 edition lasted nine days in total and Lee Reynolds took home the first prize. Haye went deep in that tournament and was in the top 5 chip counts at some point. Unfortunately, he was four hands short of reaching the final day of play. Haye finished in 40th place and took home £2085 in cash.
Prior to joining the tournament he went to Manila, Phillippines, and played in the Asian Poker Tour. While he did not make the final table, he became 28th of 211 entries which is also pretty remarkable.
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