True to his online form Mark Hirleman is getting stuck in. This may be his first EPT but he’s no stranger to the tournament scene. I have a slight amendment to make to my earlier post - I originally said he was top of the PokerStars.com tournament leader board – well, that’s turned out to be untrue. He’s actually second on the TLB behind none other than his brother. A Hirleman one-two. Just what the heck is going on?

Playing under the name ‘Quasifiction’, the name of his first novel, Mark quit college as a senior and lived off credit cards to write a book, only to rack up debts of $30k. Meanwhile his brother was playing online and making money. So using this as a backup plan Mark joined him, getting out of the hole making $50k in six weeks, enough to wipe off his debts and finance his second novel, a sequel.

But, the same thing happened as before and it was back to playing poker – sit and go’s and multi table tournaments. When he made $100k in six weeks he figured “I should pretty much be playing full time.”

That brings him to now, sitting in the ETP Warsaw, taking a break from the 20-30 tournaments he plays at weekends and the 25 year-old is clearly enjoying the change of scenery. From the novels, to poker, to novels and back to poker again, Mark tends not to give up regardless of how it turns out. “If I say I’ll do something I’ll stick to it” he says. We’ll see how far that takes him this week.

In other news last year’s champ Peter Jepsen is out. The video blog team caught up with him to get the detail...