£100k win for Dunstable poker player who taught himself to play during lockdown

A Dunstable businessman has hit the poker jackpot after teaching himself the game during lockdown.

Just two months into the year card ace Calogero Morreale is smashing this year's National Poker League, after finishing third in 2022.

The 36-year-old poker champion won £106,700 this month when he won the Grosvenor United Kingdom Poker Tour Main Event in Manchester, beating a massive field of 445 players from all over the country.

His win puts him at the top of the league, organised by Grosvenor Casinos, coming hard on the heels of his second-place finish for £65,950 in the opening tournament in London last month.

Calogero spent last year clocking up the miles criss-crossing Britain to finish third in the Texas Hold ‘em National Poker League. And his driving ambition to win the league earned him £20,000-worth of free tournament entries for this year.

When he is not playing poker, Calogero is helping to run the family property business.

As a teenager, he used to watch his father playing games of poker at home with his pals and felt he had a knack for the game often working out whether the players around the table were bluffing or not. Calogero began exploring the game during lockdown and having started playing in a casino he got involved in the league for the first time last year.

He explains: "The league is not something I set out to take part in last year – but once I started getting points after doing well in the early competitions, I thought it was worth going for.

"Since then, I have been travelling as far south as Portsmouth and as far north as Edinburgh taking part in as many tournaments as I could manage.

"Finishing third in the National Poker League has been due to the consistency in my game with a lot of final table finishes helping me pile up the points and head up the leader board, but It is very difficult to keep playing your best poker at every tournament you enter.

“I realised that I needed to get fitter again to play poker. Sitting at the table for hours on end and travelling all over Britain to play in the National Poker League, which stretches from Edinburgh in the north to Portsmouth in the south, can be gruelling.

“So, it has been important to establish a routine of eating properly, going to the gym, and getting the right amount of sleep. And, of course, I also have to factor in my work!"

Calogero has had some cool cash-ins on his way to grabbing third spot. He collected £8,800 by finishing fourth in Manchester in March and was seventh, picking up a further £7,500, at a tournament in Coventry in the same month. In October he won a tournament at his ‘local’ Luton Grosvenor Casino winning £5,690.

Now he wants to try to capture the coveted top spot in the 2023 title race and also hopes to travel abroad to play the game.

Calogero explains that his next focus is Grosvenor's first-ever £1million guaranteed tournament which starts next week in Coventry.