For the past several weeks, BetMGM in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey has been qualifying players online for the live $3,500 buy-in, $1,000,000 GTD BetMGM Poker Championship June 23-26 at ARIA Resort & Casino in Las Vegas.

One player to win their way in was 53-year-old Tony Villano of Bay City, Michigan. A High School Algebra teacher on the verge of retirement, Villano is married to wife, Julie, with whom he has two daughters — Jordyn, 21, and Carlie 19. He played baseball in college and was a long-time high school coach of wrestling.

"I decided to play softball this summer and pulled a muscle in the second game," Villano said with a laugh. "So now I try to hit it to left field and speed walk to first and get a courtesy runner."

Like many others, Villano picked up poker during the "Poker Boom" years.

"The first book I read was Play Poker Like the Pros by Phil Hellmuth," he said. "I did pretty well on partypoker playing top ten hands in limit poker just like it said. Worked well. Then I read a bunch of other books and realized I had more to learn than just bet/raise with top ten hands."

When online poker recently opened up in the Wolverine State, Villano became intrigued.

"Online Poker just recently opened back up in Michigan," he explained. "I joined when it became available. I played a lot before Black Friday. I have to drive a couple of hours to get to the nearest poker room."

It's Villano's previous online poker experience that might give him in edge in Vegas.

"I won a couple of [WSOP] Main Event seats before Black Friday online. I did not cash. I’ve played the WSOP and regional tournaments, not as often as I would like though. I’ve played poker in Las Vegas about four times. I have a couple of cashes listed on The Herndon Mob. My third-place finish in the Heartland Poker Tour (HPT) was a super rotten beat that I don’t like thinking about."

Villano isn't the type of player who'll be easily pushed around; in fact, one of his proudest poker accomplishments demonstrates why.

"When I three-bet preflop and then check-raised a smack-talking jerk three times in a row in the same hand online from the big blind," Villano said when asked about a proud accomplishment. "It was late at night in a $2/$4 or $3/$6 NL hold’em game. I may have been slightly intoxicated. We were pretty deep obviously. Definitely my most fun poker moment. He folded the river."

Villano concluded: "I’m planning to stay in Vegas for a couple of weeks. I’ve never gotten to play that much poker over that amount of time in tournaments and cash games. It’s always fun to play in a tournament with big money at the final table. Also, I saw there will be a freeroll which should be fun. I see Matt Berkey is involved and I’ve seen him on TV. I’m always happy to pick up some tips."

Tags: Tony Villano