Neil "Bad Beat" Channing hasn't always been a gambler.
"Before the age of eight I hardly bet at all", he told us. From that age he started betting on pool and cards, frequently winning and losing many weeks pocket money in a day.
Firstly he was playing five card stud but moved on to hold 'em soon after. Neil played with a group of friends some of whom have also become professional gamblers and he still sees around today.
After school he went on to university where he discovered the magic of the racetrack. He would travel all around the country to watch and bet on horses and realized now that this was to be his vocation. In the evenings he was either at the dogtrack, working as a bookie, or in the casino playing a poker tournament.
"I played my first poker tournament when I was 22 years old and I loved it immediately. Soon I was playing every night and started making final tables."
In those days poker was a minority interest hobby and tournaments were contended by far less players than we see today. Neil soon started to go to Vegas to try and test himself in bigger tournaments and in 1997 attended the World Series of Poker for the first time. He has made a WSOP pilgrimage every year since but didn't play any of the events until 2001. Since then he has played ten events and cashed in three including a 205th place finish in the 2004 main event.
In the last few years Neil has been a very unsuccessful track bookie and a very successful sports gambler.
"I was everyone's lucky bookie! Now I prefer to be a bettor and to play poker," he says.
