About Brad Booth

Name	Brad Booth
Current Residence	Vancouver British Columbia, CA
Born	Sep. 20, 1976

When poker cut into Yukon Brad Booth's high school education, the 15-year-old had to make a decision.

From then on, his learning has been at the card table.

The lesson started in childhood when Booth - who was born Sept. 20, 1976, in Vancouver, British Columbia - watched his mom and her sisters play dollar rummy games. They said he was too young to play, but he wasn't too young to learn the game; in due course Booth was advising his mom on which cards to pick up and discard.

By the ripe old age of 7, he had learned No-Limit Five-Card Draw at his grandfather's barber shop. If no one was willing to play with him, the boy would shuffle cards and stack chips in the corner until he found some competition.

In search of action, Booth started packing a deck of cards and satchel of pennies to hockey practice to teach his peers poker. The locker room became a cardroom as the 12-year-old athletes gambled away their potato chip money on Five-Card Draw.

By 13, Booth was a home game regular in B.C., challenging his fellow junior high school students to Draw poker, Stud, Omaha and other card games. To fund his new favorite hobby, Booth took a part-time job at Little Caesars and spent his evenings hitchhiking to out-of-town poker games. The schedule was draining, both physically and financially, as Booth would regularly lose his pizza earnings on the felt and be up too late to concentrate in class.

His solution was to drop out of school. But there was a catch: He had to keep his truancy from his parents in order to receive the car they had promised him for his 16th birthday if he stayed in school.

Along with his "school" books, Booth packed a Little Caesars uniform in his knapsack each morning. Instead of going to class, he headed for the pizza restaurant to earn his buy-in at the poker table. He kept up the ruse until his 16th birthday, when his parents gifted him with an $800 '87 Sprint.

Two days later he dropped the news on his parents: he had quit school, was moving out and his future was in the cards. Booth's plan was to move from Mission, B.C., to Abbotsford, B.C., play junior hockey and make a living at the pool and poker tables.

In Abbotsford, Booth was billeted out to stay with two police officers who made sure the teen showed up for hockey practice, took some alternative schooling and found a job at a local grocery market. But he also had plenty of freedom and a car. He drove the Sprint to the U.S. and sneaked into casinos to play poker. The venture offered Booth a fluctuating bankroll, which he threw on the roulette wheel and blackjack tables, and spent on a motorbike and new clothes.

He eventually ditched the table games and spending habits in favor of playing poker every day. But his routine faltered at the age of 19 when Booth's mother died and he learned he was adopted.

The news shook him so badly that Booth made a drastic move. Literally. He packed up the car and headed north to Haines Junction, Yukon, where a family friend was living at the time. He left without saying good bye.

When he arrived at the tiny town - population 651 - Booth did menial labor and mulled over his life. But his schedule still had time for poker, and Booth found action in the territory's capital city, Whitehorse, just two hours away. He went three times a week, sleeping in his car or a tent depending on the season.

The games were Stud, Five-Card Draw and Omaha with $25 max. bets and a no check-raise rule. Though there wasn't much variety - and no Texas Hold'em at all - the play was good for Booth's bankroll. On the backs of players 20 years his senior, Booth pocketed no less than $300 and no more than $2,000 for his thrice-weekly play.

He expanded his horizons to Calgary, flying back and forth between Alberta and the Yukon every month or so before giving it up to move back to B.C. for a few months. While there he met a former snooker buddy who also gave him the self-confidence to play better poker.

During that time, Booth earned his nickname - Yukon Brad. On his trips to cardrooms in Western Canada, the young poker player would walk in a casino and people would ask who he was. Someone would reply, 'He's Brad, from the Yukon.' Eventually the answer was shortened to just 'Yukon Brad' and now, even, just 'Yukon.'

Nine months after drifting back to B.C., Booth returned to the territory with some new ideas. He tired of the old faces at his regular home game and decided to start up an underground cardroom in Whitehorse. At his establishment, the check-raise was okay and No-Limit Hold'em was the game of choice. The venue brought out a new crowd of young poker enthusiasts.

In 2002, the gambler visited Las Vegas for the first time. The trip was meant to last three days, but Booth stayed on for two weeks. Even so, his attachment to the Yukon was strong enough to keep him in the northern territory. But when he decided to cut ties with his girlfriend two years later, Booth left the land of the gold rush to do some prospecting in Las Vegas.

Cash games were his thing, but the Canadian proved his worth at the tournament table at his first World Series of Poker in 2005 by placing 12th in the $5,000 Short-Handed No-Limit Hold'em event.

He also cashed in five World Poker Tour events in 2005 and 2006, including his biggest tournament payday to date: $320,000 at the Mandalay Bay Poker Championship in June of 2006. Booth has also popped up on the Game Show Network series High Stakes Poker.

But it was cash games where Booth was repaid for his 14 years of non-stop poker play. Not only did he make enough at the card tables to move into the Bellagio for a year, he befriended - and earned the respect - of some of poker's top players and Las Vegas's richest men.

Phil Hellmuth famously referred to Booth as, "the best unknown player in the world." He's cruised the Mediterranean on Cirque de Soleil founder and friend Guy Laliberte's private yacht and he counts Bobby Baldwin and Johnny Chan among his pals.

But Booth is no Las Vegas wild child. He's moved on from his days at the Bellagio and - for the most part - the carousing of his younger years. Instead, he has settled in Vancouver, where he owns a home and has reconnected with family. He has also purchased a cabin and plans to take a break from his 16-hour daily work schedule to relax several months of the year.

Trivia

• Primarily a cash game player who has appeared on High Stakes Poker
• Friends with poker greats such as Johnny Chan and Bobby Baldwin
• Started his own cardroom in Canada's Yukon Territory