About David Ulliott

Name	David Ulliott
Current Residence	Hull, UKHull United Kingdom

David Ulliott is as close to James Bond you'll find in the world of professional poker. He sports a British accent - albeit a Yorkshire one - and often arrives at international tournament tables turned out in a dapper black suit or tuxedo with slicked back hair and hand-tooled gold jewelry.

No matter that Bond has an upper hand when it comes to automobiles, danger and ladies: In the alias department, Ulliot has 007 beat. He has been known as the Devilfish - a poisonous fish that can kill if not prepared properly - since defeating Men "The Master" Ngyuen at a Las Vegas tournament in 1997.

Ulliott's path to the top of the increasingly large heap of poker players came after years of practice and hard living. Today, Ulliott is one of few poker pros on the scene to have a life befitting the game's sordid history.

He was born April 1, 1954, in Hull, England. Not much later, Ulliott was playing cards. As a child he sat in on his parent's dinner-table card games and at school he dedicated his lunch break to playing against other students and winning their money in the process. At 16, Ulliott found his way into a local casino and started playing three-card brag; a couple of years later he was hooked on poker.

By that time, Ulliott had long grown tired of high school and quit to work various manual labor jobs, dabbling in sports betting and poker games on the side. In part to support his gambling habits, Ulliott joined a team of men who broke into business safes and divvied up the contents. After police caught up with one of his teammates, Ulliott was implicated in the scam and sent to prison for nine months.

He didn't emerge a changed man, however. In subsequent years he was arrested for armed robbery and public fighting, and was sentenced to a year and a half in federal prison. This time when Ulliott was released, he straightened out and married his current wife. The couple opened a pawnbroker's shop, which they later expanded into a jewelry business.

On the side Ulliott continued to earn money in poker games. His days as a criminal began working to his advantage when he encountered robbers who wanted to relieve him of his poker winnings. He wasn't afraid of a fight.

It wasn't robbery, however, that kept him from the big money; eventually Ulliott became so good that no one wanted him playing in their events, so he turned to the professional poker circuit.

It was the early 1990's and Ulliott began his tournament career by sticking close to home and playing mainly in London events. Though he did make the occasional trip to the U.S., it wasn't until the 1997 battle with Ngyuen for the $500 Pot-Limit Omaha Four Queens Poker Classic in Las Vegas that Ulliott made a splash internationally.

The same year, he entered his first World Series of Poker where he earned a gold bracelet in the $2,000 Pot-Limit Hold'em event. He rounded out 1997 with final table finishes in tournaments in the U.S., Holland, France and the United Kingdom. He continued to be a constant presence at European tournaments in the following years, consistently making it to the final table and often winning the event.

But Ulliott has experienced his fair share of poker heartbreak. At the WSOP, he went out on the bubble in the 1998 $3,000 Pot-Limit Hold'em event, the $2,000 No-Limit Hold'em event in 2000, and both the $2,000 Pot-Limit Hold'em and the $1,500 Pot-Limit Omaha events in 2001.

With several tournament wins behind him, Ulliott made it to the World Poker Tour's $10,000 No-Limit Hold'em Championship in 2003. There, the Devilfish poisoned the competition and earned his biggest tournament pot to date - a $589,000 haul.

Today, Ulliott remains in his birthplace of Hull, England, where he lives with his wife and seven children. In his spare time, he enjoys music - both listening to it, and creating it by playing the piano and the guitar - as well as sparring and weight training.

However, Ulliott remains a dominating presence on the international poker circuit and in side cash games. He is well known for his aggressive play and keen knack for reading players at the table.

And though he is also recognizable by his dapper appearance at tournaments, his competition need look no further than his knuckles to know what they're up against. If the hands holding the cards are wearing a pair of gold rings stamped with Devil and Fish, they'll know the chips are probably stacked against them.

Trivia

• Married with seven children
• Spent more than two years in prison for safe-cracking and armed robbery convictions
• Placed second in four World Series of Poker events and holds one gold bracelet
• Subject of the British poker biography, "Swimming with the Devilfish"