Peter Eastgate Biography

Early childhood

Peter Eastgate was born in the same place as Hans Christian Anderson was born, Odense, Denmark. A middle child among two brothers, he was born December 13, 1985. Peter and his brothers love soccer and played in the local team in Odense. The young Peter Eastgate is also captivated by Tour de France, which is big in his hometown. His playing soccer and bicycling made him fit to participate in triathlons during his teenage years in which he won in several occasions.

Early poker career

Peter Eastgate’s first attempt to play poker was to pass time during college when he studied finance. He used to log on to online poker games and play poker for cash. His past time paid well as he started winning some good amount of cash from online poker games. Later Peter Eastgate would drop out from college to pursue poker full-time. When asked about it today, Peter would unhesitatingly answer that he still hopes to finish college someday.

At the age of 21, the lure of playing live tournaments in casinos caught Peter. In 2007, he played in The Irish Open, No Limit Freezeout in which he made it through to the final table and rank 9th at the finish. He got to go home with $61,224 prize money, but his experience playing with the big boys in poker like Roland de Wolfe and Sorel Mizzi left a good impression on him. He went on to play in the European Poker Tour event that year before he headed to Las Vegas.

Professional poker career

In 2008, Peter Eastgate played at the World Series of Poker (WSOP) in Las Vegas where he made his biggest win in his entire career. Peter made history since the “poker boom” to win the second biggest prize money in poker since Jamie Gold. His first place winning in WSOP that year was a whopping $9,152,416. Peter became the 9th person on record to win big prize money in a single win, and he became the first in Denmark’s all time money list beating his fellow Denmark poker big player, Gus Hansen. Peter also broke Phil “The Poker Brat” Hellmuth’s record of being the youngest WSOP big time winner at the age of 24. Peter was only 22 years old at that time. His 2008 WSOP bracelet sealed the moment like cherry on top of a sorbet.

Charity events

Peter Eastgate is well grounded with family and friends so that he’s the type to share his poker fame to charity. He and his family are now active in fund raising for children’s charity all over the world. In fact, one percent of his WSOP prize money goes to his charity right away.