Resources For Our Future

Viva Las Vegas, says the million dollar poker face from Stoke
By Liz Chong


A FATHER from Stoke-on-Trent is flush with success. He’s just won nearly £1 million playing poker in Las Vegas.

Paul Maxfield, 48, flew to Las Vegas with his brother-in-law, Steve Elliot, for a game of poker after winning $15,000 playing his favourite game on the internet. He then won the $25,000 entry fee for the World Poker Tour Championship playing in an all-night tournament. The two had to cancel their flights home twice because neither of them expected to get that far.

Mr Maxfield went through to the final and came second, with $1.7 million in a gruelling seven-hour game against a Vietnamese-American, Tuan Le, who went home with $2.9 million. The week-long tournament took place at the hotel where George Clooney filmed Ocean’s Eleven. The luxury Bellagio Hotel, where rooms start at £400 a night, boasts 1,200 fountains on an 8.5-acre lake, botanical gardens and an art gallery.

Mr Maxfield won the largest sum ever netted by any Briton in a poker game in the United States. “I’m going to pay my mortgage off and I’m going to buy a new car, probably a Mercedes,” he said. “I’m not buying a Ferrari. More than likely I’m going to retire now and take up my hobbies, playing golf and poker.”

A father of two, Mr Maxfield employs 25 people at his engineering business in Stoke-on- Trent. He began playing poker for pennies when he was 17, and soon found a casino nearby holding tournaments with £100 prizes. Later he fed his obsession with frequent trips to Las Vegas and games on the internet.

Mr Maxfield and his brother-in-law ended up spending a month in Las Vegas.

“We were sitting by the pool drinking cocktails,” Mr Maxfield said. “Steve always wanted to go to Vegas and he had the time of his life. He stood right by me, he was jumping up and down.”

Mr Maxfield was greeted on his return at the airport by his parents and family, and they played Elvis’s Viva Las Vegas when he arrived home.

“It was funny because I wouldn’t go out and buy Elvis’s CD,” Mr Maxfield said. “It was really corny.”

The game’s popularity has increased in the US because of televised competitions, internet sites and celebrity players such as the actor Ben Affleck. Two movies about poker tournaments are also being planned.

The use of lipstick-sized cameras that allow audiences to follow the players’ strategies and their cards have made the game a spectator sport.

Mr Maxfield is returning to Las Vegas in a few weeks to play in the World Series of poker, a two-month tournament with a $5 million prize