Dave Ulliott

Ulliott was born in 1954.[1] He grew up in a small council house in a working-class area. Ulliott was unmotivated throughout his education and left school at the age of 15. After visiting the bookies with his father and winning his first bet at 50:1, he picked winners at horse racing with his colleagues during hot lunch breaks. He was eventually fired from the job for taking an afternoon off to go to the races.[1]

At the age of 19, Ulliott was involved in a fight on the way home from the Golden Nugget Pool Hall in Kingston upon Hull. Ulliott was set upon by five men and their wives (one of whom slashed his face with a steel comb), after protecting his younger brother. He fought back and eventually returned home. Ulliott later claimed that he was proud of the experience and the incident made him realise that he could not be beaten in a fight "inside".[1]

Ulliott became involved in a safe-cracking team soon afterwards, after being advised by the rest of the team that everyone was involved in the operation, including the shops, which carried out insurance fraud, and the police, who turned a blind eye. Together, they targeted tobacconists, off-licence, and garages. On one occasion, when Ulliott lost over £5,000 at the bookies, he robbed that safe too, and took it home in a pram. One of the team was eventually caught, and informed the police that Ulliott was involved. He went on the run for a week, but was eventually caught.[1]

Ulliott was confined to a small cell in Kingston upon Hull Police Station for three weeks, and was later sent to Leeds Prison, where he was kept in isolation for 23 hours a day for the first two months of his nine-month sentence, which included his 21st birthday. Not long after his release, he was arrested again for an armed robbery at an off-license, but was released three days later without charge. Upon his release, he got a job at a timber yard. Later, he again became involved in the safe-cracking team, while also working as a bouncer and gambling.[1]

Ulliott was arrested again aged 28 for a fight outside a nightclub, and served 18 months in Leeds and Durham Prisons. Again he spent much time in an isolation block for 23 hours a day. During this time, he met a criminal named John, with whom he planned to carry out a bank robbery upon his release. However, on the day it was planned to happen, John was arrested by the regional crime squad, and Ulliott was advised by John's wife to "go straight". Not long after Ulliott met his second wife, he decided to abstain from criminal activities.[1]

Ulliott began playing poker with his parents as a young child and later learned three card brag at the age of 16, after being introduced to Hull's Fifty-One Club casino. By the time of his second marriage, Ulliott was organising poker games in the back of his shop and dominating the home games of others to the extent that people stopped telling him where they were being held. At the end of 1990, he met Gary Whitaker, a cafe manager from Wakefield, at Napoleon's Casino, Leeds. They travelled together to poker games six nights a week, and Whitaker placed bets for Ulliott after he was banned from all of William Hill's betting shops for successfully gambling £4,000 up to £70,000. Whitaker went on to become Ulliott's regular driver as he took part in a regular game with Dave Colclough, John Shipley and Lucy Rokach, and held a 10% stake in his action.[1]

When they first travelled to London (where the regular game at the time was lowball), Ulliott was forced to change his style of play as he found the players harder to bluff; he credits the experience for improving his game. On one occasion in London, Ulliott lost a £60,000 pot to Donnacha O'Dea when the latter hit a two-outer against him, but made all the money back within 24 hours. On another occasion, Ulliott played in five cities in a day, winning in each to earn £35,000.[1]

When playing in private games, Ulliott often took a gun to ensure he would be able to leave a poker game with the winnings. He fired it in the air one night to scare off some opponents who were planning to rob him of the money he had won from them.[4]

Ulliott was married three times. He had two children, Paul and Kerry, with his first wife Susan; four sons with Amanda (Mandy) Ashby, named Stephen, Christopher, Michael and Matthew; one son, David, with his common-law wife Diana and a daughter, Lucy, with Anpaktita,[22] his third wife. He lived in Kingston upon Hull, not far from where he grew up.[8]

Ulliott was diagnosed with colon cancer in February 2015, and died of the disease on 6 April 2015 at the age of 61.[29][30]

Despite the dominance of Texas hold'em throughout televised poker, Ulliott had a reputation as a very strong pot limit Omaha player, with over 40 finishes in the money in tournaments of that type. Once, in an Omaha cash game at The Vic in 1997, he successfully read that Jon Shoreman had a straight flush and laid down a four of a kind.[1] Ulliott was also considered the best five-card stud player in Northern England.[31] However, Ulliott indicated that his real preference was for four card Omaha.[9]

In the UK, Ulliott was particularly famous, even being mentioned in EastEnders. He also appeared on the front cover of the inaugural edition of PokerPlayer magazine, and was voted No. 9 on their Top 10 Poker Legends List.[32][33]

Dave Ulliott wears a T-shirt advertising his website at the 2006 World Series of Poker.

Ulliott was associated with the online poker site Devilfish Poker. After being eliminated in third place for $120,000 in the Full Tilt Poker invitational event at the 2005 Monte Carlo Millions, Ulliott stood up, flashing a "www.devilfishpoker.com" sign that was strapped to his back inside his jacket. The event was being broadcast live on Fox Sports Net (FSN), which has a policy against advertising .com websites, and Ulliott was banned from appearing in any forthcoming FSN productions. Ulliott later responded that he only paid the entry money so he could advertise his site; it was originally agreed that he would be able to promote the site, so he decided to advertise his site through the publicity stunt regardless.[34] Despite supporting online poker sites, Ulliott indicated that many online players do not know what they are doing when playing, which makes them harder to play against.[4][33]

Ulliott became the subject of some controversy when he claimed that female poker players would never be as good as male players. He cited Lucy Rokach as a rare example of a strong female player, but still maintained that female players would never be aggressive enough to compete with their male counterparts.[33]

Ulliott claimed that his gambling wins led to him being banned by all the British bookmakers. He also claimed that Joe Beevers placed bets on his behalf for a period of time, during which time he managed to back all six winners at Ascot one year, including one at 14/1 and one at 20/1.[9]

In his later years, Ulliott attempted to change his image, no longer wearing slicked-back hair or sunglasses at the poker table. This was a result of attending a party in Las Vegas, where he felt everyone looked the same as him.[33]