EPT Malta: Meet Rodrigo Colon, Guatemala’s envoy to the EPT
It’s a long way from Guatemala to Malta. You’ve got to get a flight first to Mexico, then to Madrid. And then there’s a final plane to this island in the middle of the Mediterranean. It’s about 16 hours in the air in total.
But for Rodrigo Colon and his girlfriend Louisa, it’s very much worth the trouble.
“This is the most fun part of playing poker,” Colon says, enjoying a tournament break on Day 1B of EPT Malta. “It’s really fun. You get to travel, get to know other places, play a bit.”
He adds: “It’s more fun to have these kinds of trips instead of sitting at the computer all day…And you can win a lot of money too.”
Rodrigo’s commute from home to EPT Malta
That, in a nutshell, is the EPT player’s experience, and it’s particularly sweet when you’ve qualified for only a tiny amount from playing online.
Colon, 34, is an online MTT grinder back in his native Guatemala, usually firing up multiple tables to play tournaments with buy-ins of around €25.
But every now and again, when he’s needing some extra motivation, he takes a look at the satellite schedule too and sets his target on a major overseas poker trip. His journey to Malta started with a €10 satellite. Then a €50 tournament, into a €250 event.
From there, he took down the full package and started booking his epic flight halfway across the world.
A TOUGH JOURNEY, BUT WORTH IT
“It was a tough journey, but it was worth it,” he says. “I try to play these satellites a lot because they give me more of a pulling force than just grinding and studying. You have an incentive. You have to work towards something instead of just grinding and 12-tabling MTTs. This motivates you more, so I always try to qualify just to have this dream going on. ‘OK, maybe I can go to Malta next time.'”
Louisa adds: “I’m the free-rider, but I’m enjoying everything here.”
Everyone’s target: the EPT Malta trophy
This is far from Colon’s first rodeo. He has previously qualified to play in Barcelona and Panama, as well as here in Malta once before for the Summer Festival. He humbly says that he isn’t quite as good as most people who call themselves poker pros, but he doesn’t have any job other than playing the game.
Though there’s limited live poker in his home country, forcing most Guatemalans with poker-playing aspirations to relocate to Mexico, Colon prefers to remain close to his family at home–and play on both the .com and the .es clients. He won a SCOOP event playing on .es, and successfully finances all his other life expenses from other tournament winnings.
WHERE’S MALTA?
“It’s tough to explain it to them,” he says, discussing how he tells his non-poker-playing friends what he’s doing when he’s suddenly jetting off to a country they’ve never heard of. “They will not even know where Malta is. The first thing they will say is, ‘Where’s Malta?'”
“I have to explain I got the full package, where I get the hotel and the entry. They’re like, ‘Oh really?’ I think they get a little bit envious. It’s not like you’re backpacking. You’re fancy-travelling it. You’re staying in the venue, a five-star hotel. It’s really nice. It’s a really nice prize.”
The next step, of course, is a really deep run in one of the events. Colon currently sits 39th on the Guatemalan money list on the Hendon Mob, with documented earnings of $1,150–i.e., less than a buy-in to most events on the EPT schedule. But the current top-ranked player, Daniel Gamez, has only ever cashed live poker event, the 2014 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA), where he finished fifth for a little less than $450,000. It’s the only time anyone from Guatemala has ever cashed in an EPT Main Event, and it’s never happened on European soil.
With Colon’s work ethic and qualifying abilities, coupled with the huge riches on offer on the EPT, that top spot is very much in sight.
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