Joe Ebanks

Ohio native Joe Ebanks was working at Home Depot for $6 an hour when he started playing poker online. He took to the game after reading about a local player that had won $60,000 from shipping a tournament on the virtual felt. Although he was still at college at the time – studying at Kent State University – Joe racked up more than $200,000 in his first two years of playing. He won a major online tournament right before his senior year began which gave him confidence in his belief that trading the classroom for the cardroom was a good idea.

His track record is proof that he made the right choice. While he accrued most of his bankroll in his early years by playing online, it has been on the live tournament circuit that he has picked up his largest scores. Less than a year into his live career, he caught two tournament wins – first at the 2009 $5,000 No Limit Hold’em Foxwoods Poker Classic event in Mashantucket which earned him $95,570. He made it back-to-back tournament victories when he won his first EPT title just a few weeks later in San Remo where he pocketed $100,842.

Ebanks carried the momentum from 2009 with him into the next year, winning another EPT title – this time at the €1,000 NLH Bounty Event in Monte Carlo. He also finished runner-up in another EPT side event in San Remo, caught a third-place finish at the 2010 WPT Bucharest Main Event and a third EPT final table of the year at the €2,000 NLH tourney in Hinterglemm.

It was in 2011 that Joe secured his name in poker’s history books when he won his first ever WSOP bracelet. The accomplishment came in the $10,000 NLH Six-Handed Championship event and earned him a massive $1,158,481. This seven-figure score was almost twenty times larger than the win he had read about which inspired him to begin his own poker journey in the first place. To make his victory all the more impressive, the American finished directly ahead of the #1 online MTT winner Chris Moorman and PokerStars pro Bertrand ‘ElkY’ Grospellier who finished in second and third respectively. Speaking on the achievement, he explained:

‘This has been a dream of mine – I’m just living the dream right now, doing what I love and making money. I don’t want to wake up from this’.

Since then, Joe has focused primarily on live poker in recent years due to both his success on the circuit and as a result of the legal restrictions imposed upon online poker in America. He has enjoyed numerous big scores after the WSOP win, including a runner-up finish at the 2015 WPT $3,500 NLH Showdown Championship in Hollywood which earned him $615,000. He currently resides in London, England due to its favourable treatment of poker players in regards to taxation.