About eight months ago, Andy Wilson did something that got our attention.

He won the Sunday Thrill. But that wasn’t the reason.

It was what he did next.

He gave a shout out to Lex Veldhuis, crediting the Team Pro for providing the inspiration for his own win.

What he’d watched Lex do, and what he’d put into his own game, transformed him from a pretty good eGamer, into an even better poker player.

That set him off on what has been the kind of year aspiring players usually only dream about.

But it’s no longer a dream for Wilson.

Now he’s planning his first major WCOOP campaign, and playing at EPT Barcelona.

Impossible to even imagine 12 months before.

In the space of less than a year Andy Wilson has transformed himself into a poker player. This week he played the EPT Barcelona Main Event. Something he didn’t even dream about this time last year.

On a life changing year…

[The last year has] been beyond anything I could have ever even dreamed of really. I’ve just gone from strength to strength. I couldn’t even dream of buying-in [to an EPT] 12 months ago.

After the Sunday Thrill I just carried on building. I just carried on playing the tournaments I was playing a little bit online.

But then I was at a live stop in the UK where I met a couple of German players. They actually turned out to be some of the higher stakes players on Stars. I’ve become really good friends with them and talked a lot of hand histories with them, and worked with them during SCOOP. I had them on my rail during the main event run.

That was instrumental to me. It helped my game improve leaps and bounds.

I had a pretty successful run in Vegas as well so I think there’s been a pretty consistent force of positive momentum throughout.

On how he set about improving his game…

I’ve studied a lot. I’ve studied a lot more in this year than I ever have done actually.

I’m always in the programmes that you can use after a session. I break down hands, and I use those to help boost my game as much I can.

On how that turned into progress…

Two years ago I was still very new to the game. I remember back then, Jason Carver was still the main twitch streamer.

I was quite tight as a player and I was very timid. I would say my progression as a player has loosening up a bit.

I’ve become a lot less timid. I’ve realised spots where I really need to go for it, spots where I was missing value. Kind of shaping my game and pushing it to new levels.

It was a dream but I felt it was an achievable one.

On setting goals and transforming from eGamer to poker player…

My time in gaming showed me that if I worked hard enough, I could make my way up towards the upper echelon, so long as I really did commit myself to that cause.

I thought it might take longer than it has. I thought it might be more of like a five-year thing. But obviously I’ve had some fortune along the way. I really have put in more time into it. I’ve put more time into this as a career platform than I thought I would have done, and I’ve made progress.

I think that’s what us gamers, or ex gamers, always had in absolute bundles – this trait to be able to really focus in on one thing you’re doing.

You’re obsessed with it to an extent. It’s the same drive that takes a lot of people to the top in the various e-sports. Poker is no different from that. That’s probably the main factor that keeps me going.

On preparing for WCOOP…

Looking ahead to WCOOP, a lot of my preparation has already been done. I’d say a lot of it was during August.

I was getting quite a lot of online sessions, Skype sessions with friends, doing all the work. Just kind of preparing myself to play some of the bigger buy-ins for the first time during WCOOP.

It gets your mind in the right kind of way of thinking.

There are a lot of psychological avenues I’ve had to go down. I’ve had points during the game where I’ve really struggled mentally. But I do feel like I’m in the best shape, even mentally, that I’ve been for a long time.

On stepping up to play live events…

It’s still a bit surreal. It was especially surreal during the WSOP main. That was quite something to play for sure.

But it’s very similar here.

I’ve always watched the EPT coverage, ever since I started playing. To finally sit down and play one has been…

And one of the main kinds of niceties about that is I’ve been selling some action for this event. The action was sold very quickly, like everyone wanted a piece of the action. So I had to restrict how much people could buy!

So that reinforced the idea that this is where I am, you know. I wouldn’t say supposed to be playing, but this is where I definitely can play.