Learning:  bad start proved to be the making of Wallis as a poker player

  PICTURE: Steve Nash  

Wallis on the learning and earning curve

LIKE so many who have succumbed to the lure of Texas Hold'em, Mark Wallis, the UK's leading greyhound trainer, first stumbled upon the game when watching Channel 4's Late Night Poker programme, which ran from 1999 to 2002.

Wallis, now a keen player with both internet and cash-game experience - including a seat in the 2004 World Series in Vegas - came across the game while flicking through the channels after a night's racing several years back.

"I'd been out open racing with a van full of dogs for my mother-in-law Linda Jones, who held the trainer's licence before me," he says.

"I flicked on the box and sat down with a coffee, then nearly spilt my drink when I spotted Roy Brindley sat down playing poker.

"I knew Roy from his days as a greyhound trainer and then editor of the Greyhound magazine, but didn't realise he was now a poker pro," adds Wallis, who trains at Lakenheath in Suffolk.

"The game totally gripped me, and I thought ‘I'll have some of that'."

After a friendly game with some pals - "we hardly knew the rules, it was just turning cards over really" - Wallis delved into the unknown when setting up on his first PC at home.

"I had the computer to watch the live greyhound internet streaming," he says.

"But I spoketo Roy [Brindley] and he sent me a disc with Ladbrokes Poker on it. I downloaded it and was instantly hooked."

However, and here's the caveat for all those would-be Devilfishes, Wallis learned the hard way that there's much more to poker than a bit of bling and a pair of Ray-Bans.

"In the first three months playing I murdered around £3,000, which really hurt," he says.

"But looking back, it was probably the making of me as regards to being a poker player. I suppose you could say I paid to learn.

Mark Wallis: "I paid to learn"

  PICTURE: Steve Nash  

"I took a break, read several books, and when I came back to it I started right at the bottom level in terms of stakes. I played and played, and three months later I realised I could play a bit. Better still, I won my three grand back."

Wallis let the poker take a back seat for a while to dedicate more time to the day job of training greyhounds - one that the record books attest he is pretty adept at - but the lure of cards was never far away.

While watching the Poker Million on Sky one Sunday night in 2004, Wallis decided to have a crack at qualifying. Playing in a satellite to qualify for the main event, he won his way through some 6,000 internet players to earn a seat at the televised stage. It was crazy really," he says.

"My first proper live game was to be on TV in the Poker Million."

However, after bumping into Brindley again and snooker legend Steve Davis at the Hilton Metropole bar the night before he was due to play, Wallis admits he was not in tip-top shape when the game started.

"I think I got to bed at around six that morning," he says. "I'm almost embarrassed to admit it, but they had to stop filming around three times and reapply my make-up as I was sweating pure alcohol!

"I enjoyed the experience, but when you're sitting with great players of Donnacha O'Dea's calibre, you can't turn up in the sort of condition I did."

Undeterred, Wallis vowed to play on, and the following Sunday he won another internet satellite tournament. This qualified him for an event to play for a seat at the World Series in Vegas.

"It was amazing really," he says.

"The cards were kind and before I knew it I had won that as well, and was booking a flight to Vegas for what was to be my second proper live game - at the World Series"

Staying in the Golden Nugget hotel, Wallis was blown away by the sheer enormity of the event, and the prospect of sitting at the same table as poker legend Johnny Chan, complete with his trademark lucky orange.

"The man's a genius," he says.

"Although I wasn't too sure about the orange - it looked a bit mouldy to me!

"I tried to play my game, but disaster struck early when I got married to a pair of aces. It was only aroundthe third level of blinds and I was all-in and got called.

"A set of trip-jacks later and I was sat in my hotel room beating myself up for being so reckless. But it was a fantastic experience."

Wallis plays more on the internet these days, where a plethora of tournaments cater for pretty much every level of player. If you settle down at Ladbrokes, Betfair, PokerStars or Party Poker one night and come up against the user name MarksFive or MarkSpark, then you know you are sat down with one of greyhound racing's finest.

"There is so much opportunity to play now, although the standard of the game has evolved too," he adds. "I tend to play most nights, but not until the kids have gone to bed."

Wallis plays in a private cash game about once a month, and has been back to Vegas too, cashing in a four-day Mega-Stack Series at Caesars Palace last year.

However, he says, one of his most memorable tournaments was when taking part in the Irish Open two years ago. The down side came when he exited the event ‘on the bubble' - the last man to finish out of the money - but the experience of sitting at the same table as Dave ‘Devilfish' Ulliott was some compensation.

"He was different class," says Wallis.

"The man's done so much to raise the profile of the game. When he shook my hand as I left and told me I'd played well, I was pretty chuffed."

As a man at the top of his own sporting profession, he admits that poker, like golf, provides him with a real method of letting off steam. He enjoys the anonymity of the internet, but still aims to improve his live game too, and has another trip to

Vegas planned this summer.

"When I sit down at that table, I'm no longer Mark Wallis greyhound trainer," he says.

"I'm simply Mark Wallis, a man with a couple of cards and a stack of chips, just like the next guy. That is until someone occasionally works out who I am, then everyone wants a winning tip."