Shawn Buchanan

Shawn Buchanan is a talented long-time poker player originally hailing from Vancouver, British Columbia. His key rankings and statistics are healthy. According to the Hendon Mob database, he currently sits in 7th place on the Canadian All Time Money List, and 105th on the World All Time Money List. Both are extremely respectable positions in the fast paced and highly competitive world of professional poker.

According to his twitter account, Shawn Buchanan was first introduced to poker as an 8 year old. According to him, his Grandmother “snowed” him in a game of Heads Up 5 Card Draw. However, Shawn would not start his professional poker career until many years later after growing tired of work as a landscaper.

Shawn started his professional poker career back in 2004. His first credited tournament play was at the Casino Regina in Regina, Saskatchewan. While he did not make a spectacular showing that day, only ten days later he appeared at a World Poker Challenge in Reno and managed to walk away in third place with $22,000 in hand. 2004 was a generally poor year for him, but it was only the start of what would become a very healthy career playing cards.

Things would start to pick up in 2005 with his winning and rankings steadily increasing year after year. In 2007 Shawn would take his first ever 1st place win in a No-Limit Championship event in Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas during the World Poker Tour’s sixth season. He also walked away with $768,000, a very healthy pot. While there was another dip in 2008, Shawn Buchanan would continue to climb rankings and rake in cash for a number of years following. His peak occurred in 2010, but he managed to pull in North of $1,000,000 in 2010, 2011, and 2012.

Since then, however, the talented Canadian player has been in a serious decline. Though he has had some success in online poker tournaments, Buchanan has not seen the same level of success in the past three years, that had been seen during his streak starting in 2007. There is hope though, as he continues to power through tournaments and is clearly still striving to win it big. Last year, he managed the impressive feat of being the first player to win the PokerStars “Triple COOP.” This requires a WCOOP, TCOOP, and SCOOP win, (World, Turbo, and Spring Championships respectively).

Hopefully we will see more of Buchanan in the future still needs a Sunday Million win to finish the PokerStars “Grand Slam.” We’ll just have to wait and see.