PokerNews’ Connor Richards grabbed an exclusive interview with embattled poker pro Brad Booth, who said on the Life Outside Poker podcast that he’s going to do his best going forward to pay back outstanding years-old debts, including the $21,000 he still owes Doug Polk.
The once prominent high-stakes poker pro has owed Polk $28,000 for more than a decade, a debt that has been trimmed down by about one-third thanks to sporadic payments over time. Booth had gone eight years without making any payments until he began sending some small payments every couple of weeks starting in January, according to a spreadsheet Polk shared with PokerNews.
Polk isn’t the only poker player Booth still owes. But he said on the Life Outside Poker podcast, which dropped on Tuesday on YouTube, Apple, and Spotify, that he’s ready to make amends and do what he can to pay off the outstanding debts.
Poker Pro Vows to Change His Ways
Booth infamously went from being “up a Ferrari, down a Ferrari” on a daily basis at Bellagio to broke, and in 2020, missing for months before being located. The Canadian poker pro who once bluffed Phil Ivey in one of the most memorable High Stakes Poker hands ever is now grinding low-stakes cash games in Oregon, and he gave PokerNews permission to ask any and all questions related to his poker background, outstanding debts and fall from high-stakes grace.
“I got caught up in all of it and all I can try and do is make right now,” he told PokerNews of paying back his debts.
But he acknowledged paying off thousands worth of debts won’t happen overnight, especially not in the $1/$3 and $5/$5 games he’s playing.
“When you’re trying to start off from ground zero again, it just makes it a lot tougher. So all I have to do now with the people who I owe, because Doug’s not the only one, is try my best to stay in communication,” Booth said.
Booth, nicknamed “Yukon Brad,” went so far as to provide an email address ([email protected]) so that anyone he owes money to can reach out to him.
He Once Lived a Glamorous Lifestyle
Booth’s obsession with poker began at a young age thanks to his grandfather who worked as a barber. “When he had no clients, (he) would give me the deck of cards and chips and sort of play 5-card draw … by myself. So I had to envision that there (were) other people there. So I kind of fell in love with cards at a really young age.”
As a teenager, Booth would hitchhike an hour to play in the closest Canadian card rooms. “And then if I had a little score I would take a bus back.”
Fast forward a few years and Booth had progressed from $1/$2 to $10/$20 and then to the biggest games in Las Vegas — $300/$600 and $500/$100 no-limit — inside the fabled Bobby’s Room at Bellagio against poker legends like Doyle Brunson and Chip Reese.
In one of the “proudest moments,” Booth claims to have started the first low-stakes no-limit poker game in all of Las Vegas in 1998, a $1/$2 cash game at The Mirage with a maximum and minimum buy-in of $100. “I took Seat 1 and played for three days straight.”
At the height of the Poker Boom, Booth was spending so much time at Bellagio that he moved in. He lived in a suite for 18 months, paying around $25,000 a month in various expenses and hardly ever stepping foot out of the poker room.
“I think there was one stretch where I went outside just a few times in like three, four months,” Booth said. “I was just happy that I could (go from) playing in a blue-chip-red-chip game … to playing in Bobby’s Room and stuff.”
“You Get One Life”
Things took a turn for Booth in the late 2000s as he began losing millions in online poker. It didn’t help that he was being cheated on Ultimate Bet in a scandal that took years to unravel. Not knowing whether he was being cheated or running bad sent him in a downward spiral.
By 2012, he had a full-fledged gambling problem exacerbated by alcohol and owed debts to several poker players. He continued playing high stakes in Bobby’s Room and Ivey’s Room at Aria and made a “little bit of headway” on his debts but “that didn’t work out too well.”
“I think somewhere along the line I just ended up being kind of a sicko degenerate again,” he said.
Booth left Vegas and moved to Arizona and then California, spending the better part of the next decade “just trying to play catch-up” as he dropped stakes.
“It was very humbling and very tricky to go from flags and cranberries and all those type of things down to a blue-chip-red-chip-green-chip-occasional-black-chip kind of game.”
But Booth’s gambling “sickness” caught up with him once again in 2020, when he was reported missing before turning up safe months later. Booth had taken his roommate’s truck and told him he was going camping before dropping contact and spending weeks in the woods. “All roads led up to that,” he said. “Sometimes in life you just have to take a timeout.”
Booth said he “certainly tried to make amends” with the roommate but that but “due to my past behaviors it may have come across just as another bullshit lie.”
“I had a whole lot of time in the woods to re-evaluate my past behaviors,” he said. “And a lot of them derived from a sickness.”
Eventually, Booth decided he wanted to conquer his demons for good. “You’ve got to wake up. You get one life.”
Booth’s now living in the Pacific Northwest alongside the Columbia River — a 10-hour drive from the Calgary games he came up in — playing in low-stakes cash games around Oregon and “making good faith payments,” however small, to those he owes.
“It’s not like I’m playing in the big games anymore, so shipping somebody $5,000, $10,000 and $20,000 is just not a thing. Now it’s got to be a lot smaller … double-digit or three-digit kind of numbers just as a token of respect while I kind of get shit together.”
Though he’s never been much of a tournament player, he may try his luck at the upcoming World Poker Tour (WPT) Thunder Valley stop or this summer’s World Series of Poker (WSOP).
Does Booth aspire to play in Bobby’s Room (now the Legends Room) again one day?
“I would love to get back into the high stakes again,” he said. “Whether that happens or not I’m not too sure. It’s not my main drive like it was in the past. My main drive is to make people whole who helped me throughout those years.”
He will be a different player should he make it back to the Bellagio high-stakes room. “I’d like to try poker again without my past degeneracies. I’d like to try poker again as an adult.”
*Photos courtesy Brad Booth
WATCH: Embattled Poker Pro Brad Booth Vows to Make Amends
Editor & Live Reporter U.S.