President Carter! Interview with the Biloxi Champ

By Owen Laukkanen Jan 18, 2009 | 10 months ago

Allen Carter after his victory at the 2009 Southern Poker Championship in Beau Rivage.

Justice prevailed on Saturday night in Biloxi with Allen Carter's million-dollar win at the World Poker Tour's Southern Poker Championship.

Carter, a Texas-based entrepreneur and part-time poker player, weathered a madcap seven-hour final table that saw plenty of high drama, head-scratching moves and soul-withering suck-outs, playing calm, methodical poker to outlast his maniac rivals and then spiking a fortuitous deuce while heads-up with Bobby Suer to lay claim his first WPT title - and his first PokerListings interview.

We talked to Carter shortly after his thrilling victory.

Allen, you've just won $1 million. How do you feel?

Oh ... how do you feel when you win a million bucks? You feel surprised and ... it hasn't sunk in yet, but I'm sure it will.

What was going through your mind when you turned the deuce to take control of the final hand?

It was funny because the way things had gone for me, I saw the cards turn up and he had me dominated, but I felt like this was the last hand of the tournament. So for that reason I just stood there and waited and watched it come off and just felt like it was coming.

It sure was quite the feeling to see it.

Can you take us through how the final table played out from your perspective?

Well, the final table sucked, because the whole first - gosh, it must have been four hours, I just sat there and folded and folded and folded, because I couldn't get my chips through Soheil Shamseddin on my left.

Plus I lay down laws like Allen Carter.

And for that reason there I just had to sit and sit and sit. And Tyler Smith was the same. He was sitting on my right and we talked about it, like man, we can't get anything through that corner, so we decided we were going to have to sit.

I thought Tyler was a really good player and for me to get to bust him was good, because he was certainly the biggest threat there, I thought.

And besides that, it was just having to deal with the maniac [Shamseddin]. I say maniac, but that's a good term. In poker, you know, it's good to be that way sometimes.

I'd been trying to trap him for hours and hours and hours and finally got him, and that was fun, and then you know, heads-up the cards just came and came. When they show it on TV, people are going to be thinking, "Man, that guy was lucky." [Laughs.]

That hand against Soheil was a turning point at the final table. Can you talk a little more about it?

That was a hand that I was waiting for. And it's funny, because to check the river there is kind of a risky play, but just the way that guy is there's just no way he's not going to put in the last of his chips, put in $700k to win $1 million. There was just no way that he wasn't going to put it in.

And the thing was, I thought he probably had nothing. He liked to play his position on me and that made it difficult, but you know, it worked out great.

What can you say about Bobby Suer, your heads-up opponent?

Bobby's obviously a top player, but I think it was more fun just to play with him.  He's such a great guy. We actually started the first day together; we were sitting side by side. So that was kind of cool to start that way and for him to be there at the end as well.

El presidito.

What did it mean to have your very vocal family and friends here to support you?

Aw, you know. It's funny because all these guys were up until midnight last night waiting. I wouldn't let them start to think about coming until we knew for sure that I'd made it, because you never know what will happen when you're going from 10 to six.

So last night they were telling me, "We've got to book something," and I told them, "No, don't even think about it. Don't even talk about it."

And so finally I called them and they scrambled - my wife, who probably got about two hours' sleep, had to find somewhere for the kids to go; so this was all just a great experience. Obviously it will never be forgotten.

The million dollars is obviously life-changing money, but how much does the win itself mean as far as validation of your efforts as a poker player?

Well, you know, the good thing for me is that I'm happy being just a part-time poker player. My business runs very well, we do very well, and a million dollars won't change me. But just the validation, I mean, that's what we play for, to be called the champion. And to have bracelets you can keep. That's really, really cool.

Scrambled wife!

Those kinds of things there you just can't put a price on. So this is all about the hardware. It's all about the title and that kind of stuff for me. I do this for the competition. I don't play cash games. I just play tournament poker because I think it's really cool to beat 300 people. And to do it at the top level is all you can ask for. That's just my personality and the way I am.

I'm just competitive. And I'm getting too old to play basketball, so ... [Laughs.] So now it's poker.

Well , you're certainly on top of the poker world tonight. Congratulations.

Thank you.

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Allen Carter may not be the best-known champion in the World Poker Tour's seventh season, but he certainly proved his poker worth on Saturday night at the Beau. Whereas counterpart Soheil Shamseddin played like he didn't need the money and in doing so threw away his shot at the title, Carter remained focused throughout the evening, setting a strategy and sticking to it on his way to two bracelets, seven figures and glory times infinity.