Bankroll Buster: Fernando Pons Turns €30 Into $1,000,000

(Photo: 888poker.com)

Today we are documenting the amazing story of Fernando Pons Garcia, who is celebrating turning €30 into a massive $1,000,000 (so far) by reaching the final table of the World Series of Poker Main Event where he will start play as the short stack with $6,150,000 in chips. It is worth noting this is Pons first ever cash at the WSOP so his is a genuine good news story that we all dream of emulating one day.

Pons story reminds the rest of us that if we can get good enough, there is at least the possibility of turning our poker playing into something spectacular. For Pons, he has the dream of going even further in the WSOP Main Event, turning his very small buy-in into the first prize of $8,000,000 and securing his place in poker history as one of very few WSOP Main Event winners.

Thanks to his great run Pons now sits at 10th place in the standings of all-time money winnings for spanish poker players as he chases Juan Carlos Mortensen, the 2001 WSOP Main Event winner. Pons’ story is a modern day version of the 2003 Chris Moneymaker story, when Chris turned $40 into $2.5 million and broke any myth that poker was not a game for everyone. Fernando is ready to renew the public’s belief that anyone can do it and if he wins in the difficult environment of modern poker, we might once again believe that poker riches and life changing wins can still happen at the highest level.

To reach the WSOP Main Event in the first place was an achievement. Pons played a €30 satellite on 888.es and managed to win the event, winning him a seat at a larger €250 satellite where the winner of that tournament bagged a dream trip to Las Vegas and a seat at the coveted Main Event, which costs $10,000 to players wishing to buy in outright. To cut a long story short, he won the €250 satellite, beating 42 other entrants to claim the prize. Pons was given time off from work to play the event by his boss.

Sitting down to play at the event, Pons’ initial goal was just to have fun and make sure the trip was a memorable one, expecting to get through a few levels before busting out and heading home enriched by the experience, if not by any winnings. Destiny was to step in however. He managed to build a stack and slowly the belief began to rise and as he moved into Day 3 he began to dream about making the money in earnest. At this point the $1,000,000 win was not at the forefront of his mind, but the min-cash of $16,000 seemed pretty good for someone who had bought in for €30! He achieved this goal and as the days passed he began to set loftier and loftier goals and dreaming about a life-changing win that would vastly improve the lifestyle of a retail executive and his family.

On Day 6 Pons reached a moment of reckoning. He found himself all-in with 99 against an opponents AA. Never mind, it was good while it lasted. The he hit the miracle 9 and found himself chip leader with 43 players remaining. A further river save helped his AQ beat out JJ and he moved into the final 27 players with a 17,000,000 chip stack which was good enough for the top ten stacks and he now had real belief that this was the life changing moment every poker player dreams of.

Pons admitted that when Joshua Weiss was looking like busting out of the tournament and let his stack dwindle to just two big blinds before making his move, his own stack was getting smaller and smaller by the hand.

Then Weiss pushed and he went out. Pons had done it. A minimum $1,000,000 win did not prevent him from having to contact his boss and ask for more time off in November to chase the dream, but I’m pretty certain $1,000,000 will be enough to dampen the blow even if his dream run ends early. If he does catch a run of cards, he might yet go further.

As he told his boss: