Dean Meyer

Amateur players dream of having a run like North Dakota rancher Dean Meyer. A former state legislator and farmer/family man, Meyer won the first two tournaments he played on ClubWPT.com and earned himself a free seat in a $10,000 buy-in World Poker Tour event before his free two-week subscription on the event even expired. Meyer will tell you he isn’t a poker player, but he is making the most of a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Read about his performance at Foxwoods World Poker Finals

Interview

ClubWPT: You claim you’re not really a poker player. How did you end up coming to the site?

Meyer: I was just watching TV one night when the World Poker Tour was on and thought it looked fun. I’d played a little bit, so I went in and played on it that night as part of the two-week free trial and that was when I won my seat here.

ClubWPT: How many tournaments did you play before you won your seat?

Meyer: I won the first night I played in a satellite tournament. I just started that night and there were 680 guys [playing]. I made it to the final table and they just quit and said, “you ended up in 6th place,” and the top six qualified to play in an event that Saturday night.

Then I went down to my son’s for supper that Saturday night after we were haying, and I said, “I’ve got to get home, I’ve got a poker tournament to play in at nine.”

ClubWPT: Did that surprise your family at all?

Meyer: They thought it was a lot of fun. My son asked me how many people were in the one I played the other night and I told him and he didn’t think [it was] that big. Then I called him that night and said, “I just want to go to bed,” because there were 3,100 players in the one that night, and then I won it.

ClubWPT: That must have been surreal, winning the first two tournaments you played on the site.

Meyer: Yeah, it really was.

ClubWPT: Were you picking up a bunch of big hands?

Meyer: Yeah, I was getting nice cards and playing kind of conservative and nobody was outdrawing me. You know, normally in the tournaments I play, you get a pair of kings and someone will beat you with a pair of aces, and all night long I kind [of] held on. When I got to the final table, I was the low guy on the totem pole and someone went all-in on the first hand and suddenly we were down to five or six players and I really started paying attention. I’m kind of hoping that’s what happens here [at Foxwoods].