Sam Grafton

Sam ‘The Squid’ has been using his tentacles to win poker tournaments for some time now. Born in the UK and based in London, he has been a professional poker player since 2010. Describing himself as someone that needs ‘intellectual stimulation’, the complex strategy of the game is what drew him to it – along with the money, no doubt.

 Sam’s real upswing began in 2012. In May of that year, he placed third in the SCOOP-02-H $2,100 event for a healthy $188,000. Picking up a number of five-figure cashes along the way, he closed out the year in style by shipping the GUKPT Main Event for £102,700. The following year, he was hired as a coach for the poker coaching site RunItOnce. Sam produces strategy videos for tournament players – these range from hand analysis and tournament replays to lessons on how to use solvers (specifically PioSOLVER) to better your game.

 The Squid can ink some more figures onto his winnings given his live successes in 2017. He kicked off the year by winning a $5,000 ASD 6-max event at the Aussie Millions for a total of $106,156 USD. Off the back of seven cashes in the WSOP, he took down the €1,100 Bucharest PokerStars Festival Main Event in August for $139,050.

 Sam’s live poker winnings are impressive in their own right, but his online earnings are the real feat. Grinding on a variety of sites – most commonly at PokerStars under the screenname ‘SamSquid’ – his tournament winnings total more than $5,000,000 since 2010. His propensity to grind never seems to wane, and you’ll still see Sam playing a ton of mid-stakes MTTs for the value despite being able to play in the bigger games.

 Outside of crushing poker, Sam is known to be very active and amusing on Twitter. He’s particularly interested in politics and can often be found voicing his two cents on current affairs. During the 2017 WSOP, he poked fun at the craze of cryptocurrency that many poker players were swept up in:

“Strategies for winning at WSOP
2010 Small ball
2011 Three bet
2012 Four bet
2013 Five bet
2014 Flat
2015 Ranges
2016 Blockers
2017 Ethereum”

Even though The Squid didn’t ship any events in the 2017 WSOP, it seems fair to say that he won the Tweet-of-the-Series title. 

If you want to hear more about Grafton’s story, he had a chat with Joe Ingram on his podcast which can be found here.