Over the next 50 days, Maurice Hawkins plans to win at least a couple of bracelets and a staggering amount of money.

Over the last 11 years, Maurice Hawkins turned the WSOP Circuit into a bit of a personal playground for himself. He’s cashed 53 times, made 28 final tables, won 10 rings and taken home a cool $1,259,947. But that level of success eludes him every summer when the field sizes get bigger and bracelets, not rings, are the end game reward.

He’s got just 17 career World Series of Poker cashes, just $323,311 in earnings and the only WSOP final table he’s ever made, the $1,500 Millionaire Maker in 2014, resulted in a ninth place finish.

That all changes this year, at least that’s what Hawkins believes. Throughout the 50 days and 50 nights of the 2017 WSOP, PocketFives will provide readers with an insider’s view of Hawkins’ pursuit of his first career bracelet and the piles of money he hopes to win.

* * *

Just a few hours in to the 2017 WSOP and the bravado or swagger or confidence – whatever you want to call it – that Maurice Hawkins has a reputation for made an appearance when he told PokerNews he plans on winning $7 million this summer – nearly three times his career earnings.

“Well, I figured, I win two bracelets, that’ll be worth about one million and another one is worth about $850,000,” said Hawkins. “And then, I’ll figure that I’ll at least make the final table of the Main, so that should at least be good enough, for a like top three or five. So, that’s like three/four more million, so, that’s why I came up with seven.”

For some context, the only player to make $7,000,000 last summer was Main Event champ Qui Nguyen. In fact, the only players in the history of the WSOP to eclipse that number in a single summer without winning the Main were Antonio Esfandiari, Sam Trickett, Dan Colman and Daniel Negreanu – the respective winners and runner-ups of the two $1 million buy-in One Drop events.

It’s almost impossible to hear Hawkins make that declaration and not call it cocky, and maybe it is, but Hawkins doesn’t shy away from it and points to the things he’s already accomplished as the reason why he’s capable of more.

“It comes from the fact that I’ve always done what I set out to do. I’ve always conquered and got the things I always wanted to do, off of poker,” said Hawkins. “You set a goal you conquer it, and you move on. I feel I’m one of the top 20 players in the world; my ranking is top 22 in POY. I just do what I say I’m going to do. And I don’t have a problem telling the world that I’m going to do it.“

Hawkins has made some other changes to his approach this year. For the first time since he started coming to the WSOP, his wife and four kids will be joining him. In previous years they’d come out for short trips a couple of times. Hawkins is looking forward to having his support system around him throughout the summer.

“If I can go out and my wife’s here after I take a bad beat, it’s really, really beneficial for me. Instead of being stuck in a casino or just walking around aimlessly and playing Sit Go’s losing money for no reason, because I’m sad,” said Hawkins. “That’s a really bad spot, it causes you to, you gamble and do silly things so, in that avenue it’s better for my wife to be here. The stressful part is, you have to be a father.”

That stress though is an entirely different one that he feels at the tables and it’s a welcome distraction from the grind.

“You live for the smile on their face. So, I mean, the stress of keeping them happy, yeah, it’s hard. Here in Vegas there’s only so much they can do. But, overall, we do it for the love of them, that’s why we do everything,” said Hawkins. “They’re like a record keeper for your journey. Because you can almost put yourself at that age, at what they were doing, and what you were thinking at that moment, when you have successes or milestones in your life, because they drive you. They’re like fuel to our tank. So, that’s important to me.”

Hawkins hasn’t found much success in the first few days of the WSOP, though he did get the chance to rub elbows with greatness on Day 1 of the $10,000 Tag Team Championship.

Stay tuned throughout the 2017 WSOP as we check in regularly with Hawkins and talk about how things are going – good or bad – and chronicle what could be an amazing summer.