While Roland De Wolfe's original profession involved poker, it seemed unlikely that he would ever be playing poker for a living himself one day. After all, De Wolfe merely wrote about other professional poker players and dispensed poker tips, which is a far cry from actually playing poker for a living. Even still, De Wolfe used the poker tips he wrote about to make forays into the live poker world on the side of his writing/editing job for the poker magazine Inside Edge.
One of these live poker ventures gave De Wolfe a lot of confidence as he won the Gutshot Poker Festival in 2004. And while his £4,372 first place prize was nothing to feature in a magazine, it did give him the motivation to move onto bigger and better things.
He decided to play in the 2005 Grand Prix de Paris against some of the top professional poker players in the world. This turned out to be an excellent decision for the writer since he won the Main Event along with €479,680 ($574,419)! One thing was clear after this victory: De Wolfe was on the fast track to playing poker for a living.
This became even clearer when De Wolfe bested numerous professional poker players again in the 2006 WPT Five Star World Poker Classic as he placed third and scooped $1,025,025 for the finish. Suddenly, the live poker world was starting to take notice of a guy who had only been playing poker for a living for just a year. Later in 2006, De Wolfe had a decent worldseriesofpoker as he cashed twice for over $80k. He finished the year on a very high note after winning the EPT Dublin Main Event and earning €554,300 ($696,970).
The highlight of 2007 for De Wolfe was the worldseriesofpoker because he cashed a total of six times throughout both the regular worldserioesofpoker and the WSOPE. Unfortunately for De Wolfe, 2008 was a pretty quiet year since he didn't have any major live poker cashes to celebrate. However, he was back at it again in the 2009 worldseriesofpoker after beating several excellent professional poker players to win a $5,000 Omaha tournament ($246,616). In addition to his first gold bracelet, De Wolfe also cashed in five total events.
Plenty of people were flipping through their old issues of Inside Edge magazine trying to find De Wolfe's poker tips after his successful 2009 worldseriesofpoker - including professional poker players. Of course, they got to see him live in action again at the 2009 WSOPE Main Event. De Wolfe was able to make a deep run through this tournament, only to fall short in fourth. However, the fourth place finish netted him another £278,945 ($430,325).
When you add up all of De Wolfe's cashes, he has made over $5.3 million in live tournaments. And considering the fact that he comes from humble beginnings that included writing poker tips and poker player cover stories, his career earnings are just that much more impressive.
