Sorry, Not Sorry: New Jersey's Ryan Torgersen Discusses Incredible Bracelet Redemption
Last year on July 9th and 10th, the poker world witnessed New Jersey’s Ryan “im.sorry” Torgersen accomplish a truly incredible feat. First, he navigated his way through a 1,026-entry field in Event #9: $1,000 NLH 6-Max only to finish runner-up to Ron “MacDaddy15” McMillen, good for $116,379 prize money.
A day later in Event #10: $600 Monster Stack, Torgersen was back at it and topped a 2,074-entry field to win that tournament for $172,362 and a gold bracelet. In a 24-hour period, he won a $288,741 in prize money.
Little was known about poker’s latest breakout star, who was awarded Performance of the Week right on PokerNews.
The 30-year-old Torgersen grew up in Granby, Connecticut with his parents and younger sister.
“I do not have much work experience besides a few delivery jobs I had in my mid 20's before I got back into poker and moved to Jersey,” he said. “I spent a couple years in college studying economics but was spending too much time playing poker. I did not want to go to college in the first place, right after I graduated from high school, but I did it because it was expected of me.”
As it turned out, the education he’d use to capture WSOP gold came years earlier courtesy of his father, who taught him how to play poker.
“My dad taught me the rules of poker at a pretty young age before I found PokerStars during the poker boom,” Torgersen explained. “I taught myself, originally by spending hours watching all the top tournament players from the PocketFives and Pokerstars TLB every day, figuring out how they would play different stack sizes, then just put it into my own game and saw good results pretty quickly.”
He continued: “Back then, I thought I was the best in the game and knew all there was to know, but after years of experience and studying cash games/sims I realize there will always be so much more room to get better and I'll never know it all no matter how much I study.”