Joe Beevers

Joseph Charles Beevers got his first taste of poker in Luton during a Blackjack session when he entered a £10 pot limit stud rebuy tournament. He quickly went on to play regular seven-card stud poker around North London to build his bankroll - reputedly making £35,000 from those games alone.

Although he did not turn to poker 'til later in life, Joe's father taught him how to count cards in blackjack, as well as how to work out probabilities and permutations, at the age of ten. At age eighteen, Joe Beevers joined his father and one other man to form a card-counting team. This was eventually abandoned after Joe had been banned from four casinos, and his father from nineteen.

After working for Natwest and then Citibank, Beevers attended Middlesex University where he earned a degree in Finance and Accounting. By the time he graduated, he was making so much money from playing poker and teaching the game to students and teachers that he never returned to office work.

Joe Beevers is considered one of the pioneers of Poker Television, having appeared on every single series of Late Night Poker and making it through to three grand finals - a record number for the show.

Although Beevers has not won a WSOP bracelet, he was the first Hendon Mob player, he was the first player from the notorious Hendon Mob to cash in a WSOP event, finishing 14th in the 1996 $2,500 Texas Hold 'em event.