John Paul ‘J. P.’ Kelly

Hailing from Buckinghamshire in England, John Paul Kelly is a professional tournament player with two WSOP bracelets to his name. The first of these came in 2009 – just four years after his live tournament career began – where he won the $1,500 Pot Limit Hold’em event for $194,434. Beating a field of more than 600 players in a final table line-up that included tournament veteran Erik Seidel, the fact that J. P. claimed his first WSOP bracelet in his early twenties is an impressive feat. Only three months later, he won his second bracelet on home turf in the WSOPE London £1,000 No Limit Hold’em event for $225,535. These early successes in Kelly’s live tournament career made him the first player from the UK to ever win two bracelets.

However, Kelly didn’t achieve all of this success without hard work. Finding the game at the age of 17 and quickly dropping education to focus on building up his bankroll, he studied hard and put in a lot of volume both online and on the live regional circuit. Impressively, Kelly won four of his first seven live tournament cashes – turning £200 into almost £20,000 at the 2005 Midlands Medley event in Walsall. These early victories helped propel him onto the international scene, allowing him to enjoy travelling and poker simultaneously as his talent has taken him from Macau to Saint Kitts.

Kelly’s live tournament earnings have surpassed $2,800,000 and he has won a healthy amount of money playing online MTTs as well. Formerly sponsored by PokerStars, he has won more than $1,000,000 playing across a variety of sites according to his PocketFives page.

He has also been known to dip into cash games every now and then. Between April and September of 2011, Kelly won over $400,000 at the PLO tables on PokerStars under his old screenname ‘Jp kelly’. He also made a particularly entertaining appearance on season 5 of PartyPoker’s Big Game. The most memorable moment came when J. P. ended up winning a seven-deuce side-bet by shipping a five-way pot on the flop after cold 3-betting as a bluff on a 438 rainbow board.