Kenneth Turkington is a 78-year-old poker player who qualified through an online poker tournament to play in a 2023 World Poker Tour (WPT) World Championship tournament in Las Vegas.
“I qualified, and they only took 300 players,” Turkington said. “The 300 qualifiers [then] played for the championship, which was in November, and the top 10 won their entry into the World Championship in Las Vegas.”
The WPT World Championship started on 12. December, and it runs till 21.
Players who were less lucky than Turkington will have to pay $10,400 to play in the WPT Main Event.
Turkington will have to outlast seven thousand other players to win a significant share of the $40M GTD prize pool of the Main Event.
He said he started playing poker 60 years ago in the military with his colleagues.
“We played cards to pass the time away, that was before Texas Hold’em – and I’ve been playing poker ever since.”
Kenneth said that he played at his home game with his friends, and later on, he got into online poker.
Now, he plays once per week at Harrah’s Casino in New Orleans, where he regularly socializes and competes against local players.
“I don’t play poker for the money; I’m retired, and it’s good entertainment; I especially feel [it’s an ideal game] for the elderly because it keeps your brain active; you have to think about what’s going on.”
