Early in 2008, Dutch student Yde van Deuterkom came up with a brilliant idea. Since his No 1 interest in life is sleeping, why not try to make some money out of it?

Yde, 22, who lives with his mum and is "sort of" studying engineering then built a website, set up a web-cam, put on his pyjamas and got into bed. The plan was to get sponsors to back him by advertising on his website – and so far it’s proved successful to the tune of $18,000. In return, he pledged to spend only 30 minutes up and about, with the rest of the time spent living the student dream: napping, snoozing, resting, slumbering, call it what you will.

Yde van Deuterkom

However, the sleeping part of Yde’s plan has taken a bit of a knock because he became so busy managing the flood of media interest and chatting to fans that he has actually been awake more hours than normal. He was also – for the most part - too busy to play poker, another interest of his for the past four years. But on April 24, Yde logged onto PokerStars and entered a $33 re-buy satellite to the World Series main event. Four hours and three minutes later and he’d won a seat – with no rebuys.

Eventually, after around two months in bed, Yde got up and started a new project where he just web-cams himself everywhere he goes. That too has been popular, he says, although the project is temporarily shelved while he fights his way through the field in Vegas.

Today, on day 3, Yde is proving that staying awake has its advantages. In the last level, he managed to double up through Team PokerStars Pro Victor Ramdin when his Kings survived Victor’s flush and gutshot potential.

At the start of his bed project, Yde claimed that sleeping was the only thing he was good at. Clearly this is not strictly true. Yde is now on 420,000 in chips as we go into level 14 and nearly 600,000 people have visited his website www.sleepingrich.com.

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