Home / Poker News December 2012 / The Best Poker Stories of 2012 – Dan Smith’s Emergence
The Best Poker Stories of 2012 – Dan Smith’s Emergence
Posted by: Randy Williams - Fri, 2012-12-28 07:54
When it comes to the best poker stories of the year, we simply cannot leave out the current leader of the GPI PoY list: Dan Smith. Smith may not have taken down the single biggest
poker tournament prize of the year, and he certainly didn’t win the most prestigious event of the year either. Still, his persistence and his consistently excellent showings propelled him to the top of the Player of the Year list.
Smith has started the year with a genuine bang and he hasn’t slowed down much since. He began by winning the $100k Challenge of the Aussie Millions. Although there were only 22 participants in the event, they were all “name” pros like Phil Ivey, Gus Hansen, Daniel Negreanu and Erik Seidel. Winning the event was not only rewarding in terms of bragging rights: Smith ended up walking away with more than $1 million – his first career 7-figure haul.
After the Aussie Millions, he hit something of a dry-spell. His next tournament cash came at the EPT’s Berlin stop in April, when he took home money from two events. Although his
EPT Berlin cashes weren’t particularly significant, they represented but a warm-up round for the EPT Monte Carlo Grand Final, where Smith stitched together a truly monumental run indeed. First, he hit the side events, winning no fewer than 3 of them over a 6-day period, with each and every one of the said events featuring a €5k buy-in. While all his EPT Monte Carlo cashes were 6-figure ones (in Euros) the biggest one weighed in at €250.5k.
The
2012 WSOP saw him cash in 5 events. He then won the EPT Barcelona’s Super High Roller and finished deep in another side event. He made the final table of the Partouche Poker Tour Main Event and cashed again later in the WSOPE. He wrapped things up with two cash finishes in the
EPT Prague and let’s not forget his October Sunday Million win either.
