Exclusive Interview With WPT Champion Andy ‘BowieEffect’ Wilson

Good afternoon everyone, I’m Bobby James with PokerPro.cc and I’m here with the latest World Poker Tour Champion, Andy “BowieEffect” Wilson who scooped almost $800k in prize money for 1st place in a 1541 player field.
 
BJ: Hey Andy, great to catch up with you after your win, how are you mate?
AW: Hey Bobby, faring well thank you :). Been enjoying a quieter end to 2022 with a lack of serious poker volume and with the live results at the end of the year that came along I’ve just been back home seeing family and friends before what I anticipate to be a very busy 2023.
 
BJ: So I had a little look through HendonMob and it looks like this is your first Final Table since July 2022, a ton of other cashes in between though. I know you’re predominantly an online grinder but what is it that drives you to the live schedule?
AW: I think it was just a lack of live interaction during the covid era of grinding online from the bedroom. A significant uptick in my fortune that originated online meant that I could go into the live realm upon its reopening in late 2021 and really hit it much harder from a more financially secure background and wielding far more strategical knowledge in relation to the game than I had maybe had in the past

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BJ: What made you pick this specific WPT event? Florida isn’t exactly next door?
AW: I just needed a kick up the arse after a lull of no poker in November! I knew that if I went to the Florida stop as a stepping stone toward the incredible Wynn event in Vegas that my hand would be forced into attending and trying to make my ev – If I hadn’t gone to Florida last second I really think that I may have just stayed home and watched the World Cup in the pub everyday!
 
BJ: How was the overall standard of the tournament and what was the FT like? Did you crush the FT or was it a grind?
AW: The field itself was quite incredible – I don’t really feel like I played particularly close to my strongest poker and even made some quite unfortunate misreads/mishaps but the level of play for the buyin point en route to the endgame did seem to be particularly soft and full of value. The final itself was definitely saturated with more of the guys than usual who had found great success on the tour but I didn’t encounter many bumps into the road until heads up, where I found myself having to deal with a villain deliberately ramping up the variance. It really could’ve gone either way at a point after doubling him 4 or 5 times but eventually I found the breakthrough.

BJ: £110 Summer Sizzler in Manchester 2016, remember that one? Was the last win you had in a live tournament, must feel so nice to get a win and not to mention a huge score in a live event! 
AW: The Summer Sizzler… I took an incredibly bad 5-way chop as a broke uni student who had been playing the game for about 8 months up to that point – I never really look back with regret though… The silly thousands I gave up in ev at the time actually unlocked me to have an actual poker bankroll to have as a starting foundation which would lead me on the road to dropping out of university in the Easter of second year and giving full-time grinding a crack.
 
BJ: How did you come up with the online alias BowieEffect?
AW: BowieEffect was just coined by my mother (ironically after the Summer Sizzler!). She attributed the success to my David Bowie t-shirt I had been randomly wearing during the tournament.
It’s stuck ever since!

BJ: When did you decide to go professional at poker, was there a clicking point?
AW: I think the inflection point to give professional poker a go was twofold. On the one hand I had a real lack of direction as to where I was going when I wrapped up my university degree and in addition to that I had started to see success grinding out the lower stakes online whilst learning more and more about the game’s fundamentals (including a MicroMillions win). Initially I just planned to take 6 months to a year break from university and over 5 years later, here we are.
 
Great to chat with you pal, take care and all the best!
 
Sadly Andy did not win the $10k WPT at the Wynn which amassed  a prizepool of over $29 MILLION which smashed the guarantee of $15 Mil! Andy fired 3 bullets in total and didn’t manage to make the money. Benny Glaser was just shy of the W but still received $2.8m for his efforts. Eliot Hudon of Canada won the title and was awared $4.1m for his efforts! Bravo.