There’s no disappointment quite like it, receiving a Free Play lottery ticket or a free spin on the slot machine, presuming it’s a gift from the universe and visualizing how the cash will be spent, only to be met with emptiness when the win inevitably doesn’t pull through.
We’ve all been there. Or at least, everybody but West Vancouver performance coach Slava Royale.
Instead, Royale’s $50 freeplay, a lure from online poker room GGPoker to get him back on the tables, wound up snagging him a seat at the prestigious World Series of Poker tournament.
Royale's showing in the Ultra Stepp Satellite game secured a $10,000 package comprising a 10-night stay at the Atlantis Paradise Hotel in the Bahamas, alongside entry into the Main Event of the series, where there is a prize pool of $15 million.
“This is a small miracle, it’s a really big win for me,” said Royale.
Royale had been among the 600 players out of an initial 8,000 to turn that $50 freeplay Ultra Stepp Satellite game into a $600 win, qualifying him for the second leg where he would battle it out with 1,000 players for the $10,000 packages.
The nine-hour game closed with Royale coming in 11th place and securing one of the lofty prizes – the result, he said, of fearless playing, and a spot of help from Lady Luck.
“I’m an occasional, casual player. I go lightly,” he said, adding how previous poker playing experience had comprised only local casinos, online dabbling and the tourist trap gambling rooms of Vegas.
Royale first started playing small-scale poker when he moved to Canada from Moldova, a country in the Balkan region of Europe, in 2005.
It was in 2009, after becoming a citizen, that Royale played his first tournament at the Coventry Casino in Richmond. He hadn’t been a natural.
“I was eliminated not even five minutes in,” he said with a laugh. “It was a rough, rough start. I didn’t even realize what was happening because I didn’t know the game, and people were telling me I’d been eliminated and I needed to leave. I was still sitting in my chair.”
Since then Royale said he has dabbled in other tournaments, and his knowledge of the game has certainly improved, but he has never experienced anything on the scale of the WSOP.
The tournament will run in the Bahamas for the first time – usually the annual event is held in Paradise, Nevada – from Dec. 3 to Dec. 14.
As for whether he is anxious for the big game, Royale said there are no nerves. Instead, after securing such a win, he is feeling “limitless.”
“I’m feeling like I can do anything,” he said.
Mina Kerr-Lazenby is the North Shore News’ Indigenous and civic affairs reporter. This reporting beat is made possible by the Local Journalism Initiative.
