Poker aspirations for multiple Gold Medal winner Phelps
19th August, 2008
Now that Michael Phelps has completed his Olympic run with a record-setting eight gold medals at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, many are wonder what the next move will be for this long-armed, swimming phenomenon. Disney World? The front of a Wheaties box?
Probably, but Phelps has also said he would like to take a run at the poker world as well, by playing in the most prestigious poker event in the world, the World Series of Poker main event. He admits his game isn’t all that great in the moment, but surely all those gold medals will demand respect at the table.
“I think it would be cool to play in the World Series of Poker,” Phelps said. “My game is a little off right now, so I’ll have to start improving it a little bit. But I think that would be cool, and it would be cool to meet some of those poker guys.”
Phelps also said that he had been playing a lot of Spades and had some pretty decent success in the game. Starting off kind of poorly but winning in the end. It isn’t clear what connection playing Spades has to do with playing in a $10,000 poker tournament, but he won eight gold medals so he can really talk about anything he wants and people will print it.
“Lochte and I were teammates a bunch of times and we didn’t start off very good,” Phelps said. “We were just learning the game...we were negative points all the hands. It was like 380 to 4.”
After a while Phelps started to pick up the game and that’s when things really started turning around for him. In the end the gold medallist was back on top of things.
“We ended up coming back and winning,” Phelps said. “We were bidding blind and all that.”
Perhaps Phelps will have the same outcome at the WSOP and take home the gold bracelet. Probably not, but I'm sure plenty of people would be there to watch him play.
By Michael
