Roberto Romanello

Originally hailing from Italy, Roberto Romanello moved with his family to Wales when he was still a child. While growing up, he was showing a strong interest for sports, especially soccer but a grave injury in 2005 put a serious obstacle on his path towards becoming a professional athlete. Confined to his home, without much to do apart from watching television, he ran into the WSOP coverage and this is where his passion for poker was born. Soon after, he started playing online and two weeks later he won the package for a WPT event. Although he did not achieve any success during this first fieldtrip into the poker world, the experience alone was enough for Romanello to know that the game of poker would become a significant part of his life in the near future. His first important scores on the live circuit came during the 2006. He decided to travel for the WSOP that summer, and managed to get quite deep in the Main Event, cashing for $38,000. Later that year, destiny would take him to Barcelona, where he won the €500 Barcelona Open Event with nearly 228 runners, netting over $53,000. His first six-figure score came in the EPT Copenhagen Main Event, where he finished 6th, banking nearly $105,000. In 2010 he won his first EPT title in Prague, together with the biggest score of his career to date – $845k and change. 2011 saw him seize a WPT title as well during the Main Event in Bratislava, worth nearly $200,000. Overall, he has more than $2.8 million in tournament winnings, and is a WSOP bracelet away from the Triple Crown. He is number one on the Wales All Time Money List and was a member of the Full Tilt Red Pro team for some time before Black Friday. Although he has been very successful playing poker and his family owns numerous properties, Roberto Romanello says that he enjoys living with his parents and doesn’t see that changing unless he gets married and starts planning his own family. Despite of all his achievements, he stays modest and down to earth guy that he has always been. He enjoys playing poker and tournaments have been good to him, but it is sometimes hard to stay away from home for long periods. When he is not travelling around the world chasing poker titles, Romanello enjoys playing in a home game back at Swansea. They usually play dealer’s choice with a lot of action games, although these games are much more about fun than about the profit. Apart from that, he spends most of his free time helping his brother with the children or hanging around the restaurants their parents own, in his own words, “pretending to work”.