Thursday, 28th March 2024 12:03
Home / Uncategorized / EPT12 Malta: Paddling and hitting rivers with Lucas Greenwood

Just looking at Lucas Greenwood makes you think you should maybe hike more, or climb a mountain from time to time. Or at the very least stop eating chocolate biscuits for lunch and get something made from fruit at the Juice stall downstairs.

You sense from Greenwood, twin brother of Sam currently playing the single-day high roller, that the indoors is not his natural environment. He should be swimming in a lake somewhere or starting a camp fire. From time to time he steps up and stands behind his chair in shorts and old tennis shoes. Short of a cliff to scale or river to ford, he stretches his arms up, or stands on tip-toes.

Greenwood though is known for his love of the outdoors. “He’s a Himalayan retreat kind of guy,” his father Howard said at the PCA two season ago (where Lucas and his brothers Sam and Max went deep).

lucas_greenwood_ept12malta_26oct15.jpgLucas Greenwood
It started when he was younger, working at Camp Kilcoo in Haliburton, northern Ontario, an area of the world you could only describe as proper wilderness. There Greenwood paddled a canoe into a permanent love of the outdoors. It shows a little in the bulging arms, and the beard too.

So did he tear himself away from a wooden hut in the middle of nowhere to fly to Malta? Not exactly. Working in a camp as a young (younger) man is one thing. Juggling the demands of real life make things a little more complicated.

“I haven’t been in a while,” admitted Greenwood. “It’s hard to plan it and set aside a week when you can do it. I’d like to do it in the future, but I’ve been lazy!”

Looking at it though, it seemed odd that a man more comfortable paddling a canoe along one of Ontario’s rivers, or hiking across untouched wilderness, would develop a passion for a game that in essence involves sitting in a windowless room for extended periods of time.

“I suppose, to be honest, I like playing poker, but if you spend enough time in here you get sick of it,” he said, with the family grin on his face. “It’s different. Poker is more mentality stimulating I guess, and I appreciate the competitive aspect of it. But actually, you know, there are long days. It is a grind. This last hour or two I played four or five hands.

“But I’m pretty comfortable with both. It’s actually nice to have the balance there, between the two different things.”

None of which means he can sit still.

“Honestly, I’m just a pretty restless person! When I’m sitting down for a long periods of time I just sort of get bored, especially when I notice a pot’s going on between other people that will take a while, so I get up. I’m stuck in that chair all day so I need to do something.”

So for now the wilderness of an EPT tournament room will just have to do. Meanwhile we’ll go easy on the chocolate biscuits.

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Stephen Bartley is a staff writer for the PokerStars Blog.

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