You wouldn’t think it by the cut of his youthful appearance, but PokerStars Team Pro, and newly minted father of a three-month old son, Benjamin ‘Spraggy’ Spragg has been playing online poker for a long time.

How long, you ask? Well, he tells a nice story of having to make excuses to go visit his grandparents on the weekends when he was living at home, because they had something new and shiny, and very modern in their house.

Speaking via video call to Inside PokerStars, Spraggy colours in that nostalgic picture a little more: “I remember back then our internet connection at home was still on the dial-up. So, if you went on my mum would be like ‘you’ll block the phone line up’. So, you couldn’t go on the internet all day, because my mum still wanted the landline phone available.”

Thankfully there was a solution to his connectivity dilemma close by.

“My grandparents had just got a broadband connection”, Spraggy recalls, “where you could be on the internet all day, every day, and it didn’t matter, and you didn’t block the phone line up, and it was 15 quid a month, or whatever, and you use it as much as you want.”

He adds, with a grin: “I remember several weekends being like, ‘oh, I’m going around my nan’s today’ and my mum’s like, ‘oh, you’re seeing them a lot’. I’m like, ‘yeah, yeah’.”

At the time Spraggy was playing poker for play money. He wasn’t in it for financial gain, he readily admits.

“I like the idea of progression in a game. I love finding a game that I love and enjoy. So, with poker, I saw it like that, where my bankroll in the early days, I didn’t really see it as money but more like a score, you know? I mean, I started playing for Play Money when I first started, because I was too intimidated to put my money at risk. Just grind play money. And the idea of, like, watching that play money balance go up. I was all over it.”

As he learned and studied and gained confidence, Spraggy eventually felt it was the right time to move on. It’s an approach he has stuck with throughout his journey in poker. He quickly admits that he is risk-adverse in so many ways, and that only when he feels he is fully ready will he move up in both stake and challenge. Spraggy is a true student of the game he loves.

“Then I eventually, took the plunge and played, whatever, 25-cent sit-and-goes, and took it from there. But that idea of progression in a game and building something, and I love sinking hours into stuff. It’s like the idea that you could do something productive, and it was a game, was incredible. There’s nothing really like that.”

Finding a Poker Community

In university Spraggy found his tribe, so to speak. A community of friends who, he says, were excellent poker players. They guided him, coached him, sharpened his game.

“When I was at university, I was just doing it recreationally,” Spraggy recalls. “I struggled for several years, micro stakes, small stakes, you know, like, 5 cent, 10 cent cash games, and just grinded it and not really finding a path.

“And it wasn’t until I found, like, a group of poker mates that ended up within a Skype group, as we all did back in the day, a core group of five or six guys who just started talking poker and there was some guys in there that were playing heads-up at the time, cash games and they nudged me towards that.”

Taking criticism on the chin and learning from it was – and still is – important for Spraggy.

“And they really helped me a lot. Looking at my hands, and telling me that I’m an idiot, and things like that, which I think, as poker players, sometimes you get blinded if you’re in your own corridor for so long, all the things that you do, you think they’re normal, you think they’re good, I play this hand like this, and then sometimes it needs someone to say, ‘this isn’t right’, you know, like, those habits had formed over a couple years of playing recreationally.”

For the UKIPT Brighton 2023 champion, it’s a constant quest to learn more, be better, improve. Self-criticism and being self-aware of your own game and your own shortcomings are the only ways to advance, he states.

“As soon as you’re close-minded, as soon as you decide, ‘that was normal, that was easy’ you see someone do something on the table – we’ll all be guilty of this as poker players – where you see your opponent do something, he beats you in the hand, and you put a note on him, you say, ‘donk’, and save the note.

“But oftentimes, we’re frustrated because we lost, maybe, or we’re close-minded about the way he played his hand and then maybe you go back and say, ‘oh, actually, he should be leading all-in on this card’, or ‘actually, he should be check-raising that hand’. And I didn’t realize that I just thought he was some fish. So, it’s important to always be thinking, ‘well, what if that play is good?’ and then look into it.”

Sound advice and insight for beginners to the game of poker, no doubt. Spraggy is clearly keen to impart his experience of starting out and the key points of both personal and professional development that have been important for him on his poker journey.

He offers another take: “The number one thing I see on Twitch and YouTube when I’m interacting with new poker players is they just talk about how bad they’re running all the time, or they talk about how unlucky they’re getting. All the hands that they share that they want feedback on are [something like], ‘I had Queens in a tournament, and some guy went all in, and I called him, and he had Ace-King, and then he hit an Ace. Should I have played that hand correctly?’”

Spraggy responds to his own question: “Deep down, in everyone’s heart of hearts, you know that’s fine, that’s correct, that’s exactly what should happen. But it’s interesting; we have a Discord community, and the bad beat section is always 100 times busier than the poker strategy section.

“Because as poker players you must be aware of where you’re making mistakes, you must be self-critical, you have to, if you’re on a downswing, of course you might just be running bad, but you really got to think no one is playing as good as they can. Like, Isaac Haxton is not playing as perfectly as he can. So, the chances that you are [playing perfect] is zero, right?”

Spraggy adds: “So you can either sit there and put energy into, ‘oh, I lost this hand on a bad beat’, or every single hand that you’ve played, do you understand them fully, and are you executing to the best of your abilities? The answer is going to be ‘no’, because it’s ‘no’ for everybody in the world. Recognizing your own mistakes, burying your ego, is the most important thing. Because as soon as you think ‘I’m playing perfectly, but I’m just running bad?’ You’re done.”

WCOOP Successes

Major tournament success arrived six years ago for Spraggy. He won his breakthrough WCOOP in 2020. It was, he says with a pause, “a moment”.

“I was in Dublin at the time, actually. That was during Covid and obviously, Twitch was super-hot at the time because nobody could leave the house.

“Everybody was just watching streams, and, playing games, and obviously playing poker. I was playing the full WCOOP schedule, and I was in the midst of the grind, and it ended up being a $5.50.”

He stops mid-sentence, proudly pointing to the trophy displayed on the shelf right behind him.

“It’s $5.50 mini turbo cool-down and it was the first time I’d won a SCOOP or a WCOOP and that really was the first recognition I’d had, I suppose, in tournament poker, of a win where you’re gonna get a trophy, or as a title, or as prestige. I can’t even remember how much I won it for. You know, I did not care that it was a $5.50.”

He described how the win unfolded. He’s got a great skill for telling a story with just the right amount of drama and suspense.

“It’s one of those where you’ve got 10 tables up, playing WCOOP, and I was probably playing 215s, 109s, 55s, and the $5.50 is just sort of there, and you’re all in a bit, you know, there’s probably 10,000 people in it, and, okay, I’m still in that thing, still in that thing. And then suddenly you think, ‘hang on a minute’. 200 people left, okay. Then there are one hundred people left.

“By the time it got down to the final three tables, I sweated that table like I’ve never. Like, I’ve played $1K final tables or $530 final tables, and I’ve not sweated as intently as this $5.50. Because in a game like that as well, it’s such a minefield, anything can happen at any time. Someone might just decide to be all in for 30 big blinds, and your tournament life is on the line, so I was like, I really, really did not want to bust, because that trophy coming into sight genuinely meant so much to me.”

He was Team Pro for PokerStars by this time, but all pretence of playing it cool and remembering that he was representing PokerStars on a live stream being watched across the world went out the window – he just wanted that title so badly.

“You see the clip, actually. When I did win, I was like jumping off the bed. I was like, I just won.

“I think that's why WCOOP and SCOOP are so important at PokerStars. It's because poker these days is saturated with prize money. We're very fortunate in that regard, so you can win big money all over the place, be it live or online, but prestige, or having something to show for it, or something tangible, is lacking. Right? There are so many tournament series, like, no one cares who wins this, no one cares who wins that, but people do care who wins a SCOOP or WCOOP Title."

Just a year later, a second WCOOP title followed in September 2021. It was, according to Spraggy, a different experience. Memorable for different reasons. Friend and fellow poker player Parker Talbot ‘Tonka’ also won a tournament that day and they were online together at the same time as Spraggy clinched the WCOOP win.

“Because of the format, it came so fast winning the tournament. Tonka won one on the same day, because he won the 5K. He must have been on Discord chatting with me. But winning that, and having him win one on the same day, again, that is one of my best memories of streaming and poker, and there's a clip where I'm like, ‘are we geniuses?’”

Live Poker & UKIPT Title in 2023

Some years beforehand, Spraggy - after considering his options carefully – entered his first live poker tournament. He takes a moment to reflect on being in Galway back in 2013 and his first taste of sitting at a UKIPT tournament table.

“I was a cash game player back in the day, but in 2013 I went with this group of poker friends I had, we went to Galway to play the UKIPT, and I final tabled (my) first proper live tournament that I played there. Final table at UKIPT Galway and came sixth.”

Despite that success, Spraggy went back to grinding online from home. It would be a long time before he re-entered the live poker arena at that level.

Then came September 2023 and the UKIPT Brighton. By this time Spraggy was a major name in poker. He had online poker titles under his belt and was a PokerStars Team Pro to boot. It all seemed a long way from a decade beforehand on the west coast of Ireland in Galway. Simply put, a lot had changed.

“When I was playing UKIPT in 2013, I was looking at all these PokerStars Team Pro guys, thinking, ‘oh my god’. I remember playing against, I don't think he was on Team Pro, but I remember playing Roberto Romanello in Galway and just being like, ‘I can't believe it’. Like, I've seen this guy, and he is sat at the table with me,” he recalls.

By 2023, in Brighton, he was having a flashback moment.

“To then be that guy where I'm in Brighton, and people will come up to me and be like, ‘oh, Spraggy?’, and I think, ‘hang on a minute’, this is, like, a big full circle thing - it being the UKIPT, which is the tour where I first started, and then to go on and win that one, and have a main event title as my first live poker win, my first live poker trophy.”

If it was a significant pinch me moment for Spraggy, the final table came with a feeling he wasn’t entirely used to.

He explains: “I don't really get nervous playing poker. I haven't done for a decade, because ‘been there and done it’, but on that final table, when it got down to the heads up, I was shaking. I think every poker player remembers the first time they sat at a live table. I sat there, first time I played live poker and I'm not really a nervous person, but I could barely look at my cards. I could barely pick up the chips, like, my hand is, like, trembling. It was really intimidating the first time I played live poker, and then that went away pretty quickly, because you just get used to it, and you realize everyone's pretty chill and friendly.”

Spraggy describes winning UKPIT Brighton in 2023 as “the absolute best” and a “special one”.

“There's no feeling like that anywhere else,” he adds.

Since then, Spraggy has final-tabled in Edinburgh twice and finished second in Barcelona: “Outside of an EPT run, I don't think I'm going to feel that way about a tournament (Brighton) ever again.”

Online Poker Community

Down through the years, Spraggy has built up a significant community online. His YouTube channel has over 100,000 subscribers and his videos regularly hit tens of thousands of views. How did it all come about?

“I love the interaction”, Spraggy admits. “The community was born out of the fact that I had been playing poker for whatever, seven or eight years at the time, full-time for four or five and it can be a very isolated - not that I was isolated, I had a good group of friends, and a good group of poker friends, and talking like that - but it can be repetitive, being in the grind, and being a poker player, and you know, time goes on, I played for four or five years doing the same thing every day.

“I wanted some sort of fresh challenge, and I saw that people had started streaming poker. This is, like, early days. Jason Somerville and Jamie Staples were streaming poker. I was like, I could do that.

“So, one day I just had an old webcam, I put it on, and I thought, ‘go’. And I pulled my tables up and started chatting and the nature of Twitch poker, then, was it's very small. So, if you were streaming, there were about eight people streaming, so you would naturally get an audience and mine grew pretty quickly. And I quickly realized that I really enjoyed sharing the game with other people, and talking about it, and discussing it, and I think outside of poker as well, I enjoyed, like, the entertainment aspect of it to a degree, and it just snowballed.”

Future of Poker

Our conversation turns to the future of poker, both online and live. Spraggy, with his experience and successes in both is ideally placed to have a considered opinion of where he sees it going in the years to come.

“I'm pretty positive about it,” he offers. “I think live poker's doing really, really well. I think, again, that comes back to maybe authenticity, and wanting something real and we're in a world of quick hits and with live poker you are going to commit to a day, maybe more, in bigger tournaments, but you're playing one table in a real environment with real people who you can see, and cards you can touch and feel, and I think live poker's really going to benefit from the fact that people want something tangible, and they want authenticity.”

He's equally upbeat about the future of online poker.

“I think poker naturally is saved by its own complexity in that it's a really tough game for a human to play really, really well. So if a human starts playing really, really absurdly well, it's pretty easy to check them and have AI tools, again, working against people with nefarious intent.”

He adds: “So the inherent complexity of poker, I think, saves it from cheating in a lot of ways. Obviously, there are going to be challenges there. I think that's true of every industry. I don't think that's a uniquely poker problem.”

Our time is up, and more immediate concerns beckon for Spraggy. Quality time with his three-month old son for one. He may be tired, but, as he sagely comments on both life and parenthood: “It's all challenges, isn't it?”

How very true.

Ben is a PokerStars Team Pro and plays under the username ‘Spraggy’.

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