A lot of time has passed since Sam Grafton was cutting his teeth in the smoky backrooms of London's low-stakes scene. First a backroom hobby, poker turned into a meager living before Grafton stacked up more than $15 million in earnings over the course of the last 15 years. Now he's a PokerStars ambassador and a standard bearer of poker's 'cheeky genius' archetype.
"I played in a little snooker room," Grafton told PokerOrg in a break time chat at EPT Cyprus. "I used to work with adults with learning disabilities, so I did that during the day and I finished at, like, 4pm. My brothers were playing in a [poker] game, and one day one of them came home with £300 or something. I was like, 'Wow, that's a lot of money'. Also, I was in my hometown, and there wasn't so much to do at that particular point, and I'd come back from doing my Masters. So I was intrigued."
Grafton learned the rules, but he didn't really know how to shuffle. "It was a self-dealt game and people were mocking me because I shuffled the cards so badly and they were, like, 'Who's this guy?'"
Out of the snooker hall
A lot of Grafton's early success can be attributed to luck, he says, and it was quick to unfold into a full-blown hobby. "My brothers were already in this little snooker hall game, amongst the best players, so I started imitating them. Soon I started to make money in the snooker hall game. That was on Tuesdays and Sundays. We found there's a game in the next town in a pub on a Wednesday so we'd go there to play on a Wednesday. And then we'd go to Birmingham, which was the big city, on a Friday night and we started to play."
Grafton soon moved to London, where he worked in a nightclub and expanded his interest in playing cards.
"I worked in a night club and I would get my wages. I would go and play cash with £90 that I got at midnight. A shaky time to play poker — I mean, I was just going because that's when I got my wages. I'd get my wages in cash. But actually I was finishing a shift sober from working at the door of a club and playing against drunk people — so it was probably a good spot."
After taking an internship with an NGO that worked on environmental issues, Grafton needed a way to pay his modest rent. He was living in a five-person flatshare, and poker was the perfect opportunity to pay the bills. "I started doing it full time and never looked back."
"I remember eventually I played a tournament, so I used to mainly play the cash games while I was playing. It was a very dedicated little poker club. There was an idea that the games here were the toughest in London because it was poker only and there were no casino games. They put one on once every three months — I think it was a £500 buy-in or something. One of the dealers put me in."
Grafton made it to the final day and cashed. "I kind of began to feel like I can do this, you know."
PokerStars calls
Fast forward to today and Grafton has built a poker life beyond anything he could have imagined when he sat down for his first game at the snooker hall. He has over $15 million in earnings on The Hendon Mob and a high score of $5.5 million in 2022 at the Coin Rivet Invitational at the Triton stop in Cyprus.
What started with his first cash for £1,168 in March 2009, and the strength of several EPT wins and millions of dollars in earnings, led to Grafton being named a PokerStars ambassador in April of 2021 — a role he has embraced, on and off the felt.
"It is demanding, just because I've got two things that I really care about rather than one. And the first is, of course, you know, maintaining my craft and staying on top of things. Poker is continually evolving and there's some amazing young players coming through every year from all over the world. And then of course, being an ambassador for PokerStars, which I love to do."
Finding fair outcomes
Grafton's influence, like other PokerStars ambassadors, extends into a player advisory capacity, and he is helping to shape the EPT as it grows out its regional tours in the UK and beyond. He also has a hand in consulting with the EPT bosses as they respond to developments in technology with rule changes and other regulations.
"We're lucky that we have amazingly experienced tournament staff and floor people here who can deal with the nuance of things, but also just as an industry we need some clear rules and clear guidelines that can be used even by less experienced tournament staff."
It's a challenging time for organizers of the brain sports, just as it is for teachers, professors, and pub quiz hosts. "I'm sure we're not alone as an industry in having to deal with what AI brings, what smartphones bring. You try going to a pub quiz, it's tough, it's tough to get a true and fair outcome in a pub quiz these days, damn it."
'Players themselves have to self-regulate'
The situation came to a head this summer when controversy erupted around WSOP Main Event champion Jonathan Tamayo's use of solvers at the final table.
"It was probably long overdue and, you know, unfortunately these things tend to sort of center around one person or one incident and that's not perhaps the most mature way to do it. We reach an incident that we can all gather around and discuss and from that discussion, there's some good outcomes coming in."
Grafton thinks they're doing a good job in the face of difficult circumstances, and now it's time for the players to play their role. "It's just a case of constant vigilance. Players themselves have to self-regulate. There's nothing more powerful in poker than the strength of feeling in the community.
"If the strength of feeling in the community is that this is not something we're going to accept from our peers and colleagues, then that will have a big effect."
Images courtesy of Rational Intellectual Holdings Ltd.
