By
P5s Staff |
Published
Oct 25 2009, 11:55 AM
This week, Eric basebaldy Baldwin, who has pocketed over $1 million in live tournament earnings in 2009, joins the PocketFives.com Podcast sponsored by Carbon Poker. The former baseball star, who has final tabled three major live events since June, is fresh off a fourth place showing in the annual Ultimate Bet Aruba Poker Classic for $126,000. During the 2009 World Series of Poker (WSOP), he earned his first bracelet after taking down a $1,500 buy-in No Limit Hold’em event for $521,000. Read on to hear what Baldwin had to say.
Baldwin is in the running for the CardPlayer Player of the Year award, among other accolades. As such, he’s entered a number of qualifying tournaments to build his point total, including the Commerce Casino’s first ever Ironman event, which featured a no-break format. Baldwin explained, “I always told my friends and family that if I had a shot at something, I’d go for it. After a couple of nice scores at the WSOP, I was in the top three [of the CardPlayer Player of the Year standings] and decided I’d take the rest of the year to grind the live circuit and give it a shot.” At the time of writing, Baldwin is neck and neck with Yevgeniy Jovial Gent Timoshenko (pictured at left) for tops in the standings.
The 2009 Ultimate Bet
Aruba Poker Classic drew 475 runners to the sunny locale and, in the end, Baldwin outlasted all but three of them. On his experience in the tournament, which was formerly a stop on the World Poker Tour (WPT), he told the PocketFives.com Podcast, “Aruba is probably my favorite tournament trip of the year. The island is amazing and the atmosphere is amazing. This was actually my fourth trip to Aruba and the first time I made it past Day 1 in the Main Event, so the previous three years, I had a lot of time to party, relax, and enjoy the beach. This year, I decided it’d be a good time to see if I could do some damage in the tournament.” PocketFives.com member Brandon
AreTheseUtz Hall ultimately took down the title in Aruba.
If you’ve seen a few images of Baldwin, then you know that he sometimes sports a
mustache. I’ve always wondered what its origins were and Baldwin revealed, “The mustache was pretty funny. Every year, my college buddies and I go to Canada on a fishing trip and while we’re there, nobody shaves. The last day, we all carve out a mustache and then come home with it. Every year, I’ve let it grow longer and longer and gotten more used to it. This year, I decided to bring it all the way back to Vegas.” A poker magazine recently featured a spread of Baldwin sporting his mustache.
Baldwin is an accomplished baseball star. In fact, his WSOP profile notes that he was part of the
Division 3 National Championship team in 2005 while attending the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater. As expected, his original goal was not to be a poker player, but rather a big leaguer: “All I wanted to do until my senior year of college was play baseball. I held onto that dream as long as I could and once I realized that it wasn’t going to work out, it was like, ‘Wow, now what?’ I was fortunate enough to have a year in school after I was done with baseball, [so] I was able to see if I could make a living at poker.” It obviously worked out.
Check out the rest of this week’s
PocketFives.com Podcast featuring Eric
basebaldy Baldwin.
Listen up, USA online poker players. If you’re looking for a new site, check out Carbon Poker, a room on the Merge Gaming Network. You can snag 30% Carbon Poker rakeback through PocketFives.com. This month, we hosted an exclusive $15,000 rake chase on the site, making signing up even more lucrative. Don’t forget about the 150% up to $1,000 sign-up bonus, which is not deducted from rakeback!