Brian Hawkins

Florida native Brian Hawkins was a prodigal poker player in his early days, becoming known as one of the most talented online players post-Moneymaker effect and pre-Black Friday. The American earned most of his money across his accounts at PokerStars (as ‘SNo0oWMAN’) and Full Tilt (‘SN8WMAN’), racking up over $2,000,000 in online MTT earnings between 2006 and 2011. He reached an all-time high of 8th on the PocketFives tournament leaderboard in 2008 after some impressive scores.

His largest cash in the online arena came in 2008 after he took down the prestigious Sunday Million on PokerStars for a huge $278,502. Brian navigated past a field of more than 3,000 players to scoop the largest weekly tournament prize going. It was this score that helped to propel him up the tournament leaderboards into the top 10 earners for the year.

Twelve months later, Brian was invited to partake in an online challenge organised by BLUFF Magazine. Involving the strongest players in the online world at the time, the goal was to spin up a $200 bankroll to as large of a sum as possible in one month without losing the initial deposit. Hawkins won the challenge as he turned $200 into $25,066, and publisher of BLUFF Magazine Eric Morris explained, ‘Brian’s performance in the challenge was phenomenal. He proved himself to be a world class player and we’re going to be proud to feature him on the cover of an upcoming issue’.

Since Black Friday struck, Brian did not choose to relocate from Florida to pursue online poker further. He did up his output on the live circuit, notably winning almost $200,000 in 2014 after he final-tabled the $5,300 No Limit Hold’em SHRPO Main Event in Hollywood. His poker activity has been relatively quiet in recent years – it is possible that Brian has been playing on one of the legal U.S. poker sites where his winnings aren’t publically available.