Walking away from the game of poker is easy when you suck. After all, poker is about making money, and if you can’t succeed at it then there’s no reason for you to be flushing money down the drain (unless you’re rich and just having fun of course).
But it seems highly unlikely that you’d want to walk away from poker when you can make a great living at it - especially if you’ve got nothing else planned when you’re done with the game. However, that’s exactly what Ville Wahlbeck intends to do at the end of this year’s World Series of Poker.
This announcement really comes as a surprise since Wahlbeck has been nothing short of brilliant at the WSOP and has managed to win the Mixed Hold’em World Championship, place 2nd and 3rd in two other World Championship events, and finish 6th in the ever tough World Championship of H.O.R.S.E. All of these finishes, plus two other cashes, have earned Wahlbeck over a million dollars in this year’s WSOP and enabled him to sit at second in the WSOP Player of the Year standings.
But in interviews, Wahlbeck as been adamant that he plans to walk away from poker after this year. The Finn has always been more of a cash game player in his career, but he doesn’t want to play cash games at all when he’s done with poker and only envisions playing a few tourneys.
When asked what he’ll do in the future, Wahlbeck doesn’t really seem to know but made it clear that he does not want to go back to his old jobs of substitute teaching or freelance journalism. He said maybe if the right business opportunity comes along he’ll get into something like that. Personally though, I don’t really see him quitting poker altogether and think he’ll be back in the WSOP.