From low-stake games to a US$8m poker hand
Boy with a head for numbers used to play for US$10 in his parents' basement, now the 23-year-old has won the world's richest tournament
The world's newest poker champion started hustling his friends in low-stake basement games when he was a child. As a teenager, Ryan Riess vowed to win the World Series of Poker main event.
Riess, now 23, had also vowed to get a tattoo of the two cards that brought him to victory, but after the streamers and confetti burst onto the ESPN stage at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino, he began reconsidering that pledge.
"I'm not so into tattoos now, but I promised myself I'd do it, so maybe I should," said the poker pro, eying the Ace and King that won him the world's richest poker tournament nestled among his stacks of US$100 bills.
Riess' parents say that like many poker players, their son always had a head for numbers. As a 14-year-old, he became obsessed with poker after watching amateur Chris Moneymaker win the main event.
"In my basement, I had a US$10 home game that I ran twice a week, just playing with my friends. I won all the time, which I thought was kind of weird, so I thought maybe I should do this more often," he said, sipping beer from a can moments after his win.