Jack Sinclair: From Online to Poker's Biggest Stage
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Jack Sinclair might not be a familiar face to many of the players in the field, but if the people he hangs out with are any indication, his opponents should keep their guard up. This 26-year-old Brit has been playing professionally for two years and mainly cut his teeth online. He never really took to playing live and only started playing live tournaments at the prodding of his friends, Philipp Gruissem and Anton Morgenstern.
To date, Sinclair has only three live tournament cashes for a total of $13,500, logging his first cash in April at the partypoker Millions Live in Nottingham for ￡?7,500 (USD $?9,412). The other two cashes came during Sinclair's first visit to the WSOP earlier this summer in Event #60 $888 No-Limit Hold'em - Crazy Eights for $1,742 and Event #52 $1,500 No-Limit Hold'em for $2,346.
It's usually an advantage to show up to the table with your opponents not having a clue as to who you are. In poker, the less people know about you the better. But apparently, Sinclair can't use that to his advantage for more than a hand.
"As soon as I sit down at a table, people automatically assume I'm three betting them light and doing a bunch of crazy stuff. I don't know why it must be the way I look at them or something. If someone looks me up, they are basically going to find nothing. They might think, "This guy is going to be a huge fish." I sit down and play one hand, and my image is completely gone. Maybe the first hand I play, I can get away with something. But overall no."
No one would argue that the Main Event is the ultimate grind. The days start to run together, hands are forgotten and what happened when is a blur. Sinclair, however, was able to recall his Main Event journey with amazing detail.
"Day 1 was a breeze; I won most of the pots I played. Day 2 was kind of similar. I did make a few bad decisions toward the end, but I had a decent stack at the end. I had a horrendous table draw on Day 3. The first four hours were just brutal. I played most of Day 5 with Mickey Craft. That was probably the most fun I had at a table, maybe ever. Day 6 was an insane day. I started with a little over 2 million, and now I'm at about 30 million. It's been quite the day."
Sinclair took that momentum and kept running with it well into Day 7. When asked if he's aware of the enormity of this moment, Sinclair's smile gets a little bigger, and he paused for a moment.
"I'm trying not to think too much about anything except the poker. But, yeah, it is definitely surreal. I'm just trying to play good poker, make the best decisions and if I do that, then I'll be happy."