Meet the man in the middle: the multi-talented Kevin Houghton
The poker table is always a melting pot, bringing together people from across the world, of all ages, and from all walks of life. This goes double at somewhere like the European Poker Tour (EPT), whose player base is more diverse than anywhere else on the planet.
Even though there were only 29 players remaining on Day 5 of the enormous EPT Barcelona Main Event today, the field boasted not only an ex-professional football (soccer) player, but also an ex-professional football referee, an inventor and entrepreneur, a property mogul and a children’s book author.
But while the first of those, the ex-professional footballer, is Jimmy Kebe (formerly of Reading and Crystal Palace, among others), all the other boxes are ticked by just one man.
The remarkable Kevin Houghton, from Preston, UK, is a keen amateur poker player, but it’s amazing he finds the time. He also manages a roster of Air BnB properties and produces the “Prince Trumpy Bum” series of books for the under-6s. But his real passion remains for football officiating, and specifically his company “RefStuff“, which he says is the biggest refereeing company on Amazon Marketplace.
EVERYTHING FOR THE MAN IN THE MIDDLE
It’s there that he sells everything that a football referee could possibly want, including a number of his own inventions.
“All my equipment that I sell, I’ve created myself,” Houghton says. “My background is as a children’s football coach, then I went into refereeing after managing and playing. When I was refereeing, I thought, ‘This equipment is rubbish, I can do better than that.’ So I did, so I set my own company up.”
Pointing to the hardware on his wrist, he continues: “Technically I’m an inventor, really. This is my own product, the watch here. It’s a watch for referees. It’s the only digital watch that scores the game for you, the only one in the world.”
Kevin Houghton is wearing the watch he invented at the tables in Barcelona
Houghton enjoyed a successful career in refereeing, before moving away from the centre of the pitch to avoid some of the politics involved in top-level sport. It also allows him the freedom to be his own boss. But he looks back with pride on his time in the game, in particular his ability to form a rapport with players. It helped him avoid having to reach for his red card on too many occasions.
“I was so good at man management,” Houghton says. “All the players gave me so much respect. I would know, being a coach, being a player, I would know where the ball was going to go. I would be up with play, in the right position all the time. I hardly ever sent anybody off. I only sent five players off in my career of 10 years, and they had to be.”
POKER ‘FILLS MY CUP’
Though he never encountered Kebe on the football field, he is no stranger to mixing with the elite. “The most famous one I encountered was Jamie Vardy, when he was coming up through the levels,” Houghton says, referring to the ex-England striker. “I’ve reffed him and lined him at every single level before the Conference. Before he got his move to Leicester.”
As for poker, Houghton is a huge fan of the game. But sees no need to think of himself as anything but a recreational player.
“This is just a hobby, this,” Houghton says, despite his position in the last 30 of the third-biggest EPT ever held. “When people say they’re a poker player, I say, ‘I play poker.’ I think it’s different. A lot of people treat this like it’s a career, like a job. But it’s far down the list for me.”
He adds: “But I love it. I get so much out of it. With everything else going on in my life, my cup is nearly full. My businesses, my children. But this gives me the social thing, the mental stimulation, the analytics, analysis, mathematics, people-reading. All that sort of stuff. It just fills my cup for me.”
Houghton is starring on the feature table today
Houghton, 48, says he came to Barcelona to play some side events and only planned to stay a week. But after a decent run in the PokerStars Cup (he finished 334th for €5,100), he entered a satellite for the Main Event, won that, and now here he is.
“It’s been great, I’ve loved it,” Houghton says. “I only brought enough clothes for a week, so I’ve been washing my clothes in the shower and drying them in the humid rooms.”
A RULE-BREAKER
His biggest previous poker result came in Las Vegas in 2016, where outright victory in a $600 buy-in tournament was worth $120,000. But this is already his best result on European soil. If he’s still involved at the final whistle today, a new career high will be in touching distance.
And though you might expect a referee to play the roll of enforcer, following all the guidelines to the letter, Houghton warns his opponents that he is not quite so predictable.
“I’m not one to follow rules,” Houghton says, referring to his time dealing with the football authorities. “You’ll see that on the poker table as well, there’s a line that I cross all the time.”
EPT watchers wait eagerly to see exactly what that means…
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