The world of poker is in mourning today after receiving the sad news of the death of Pierre Neuville. The former PokerStars Ambassador was 83 and had prostate cancer, according to reports.

Having learned poker as a student, Neuville did not seriously pursue it until significantly later in his life, after filling seven previous decades with extraordinary experiences from another side of gaming: specifically board games.

Neuville had befriended legendary cyclist and fellow Belgian Eddie Merckx, with whom he developed a board game carrying Merckx’s official endorsement. He founded a games company, which he eventually sold to the giants of toy development and retail, Hasbro. Neuville came with the company, and he ended up working as VP for Hasbro for the next 10 years.

He continued to work in various business enterprises until his official retirement in 2008, by which point he had rediscovered poker and found a new, abiding passion. (Of course, he also designed and marketed a poker-based board game called “Poker Champ”.)

Neuville played tirelessly through the boom era, both online and in live tournaments across the world, and was already a very familiar face on the EPT when he defied the odds to reach the final table of the World Series Main Event in 2015.

At 72, he became the oldest so-called “November Niner” and finished seventh for $1.2 million.

He was indefatigable as a poker player, qualifying time and again for EPT events online, embracing the nickname the “Serial PokerStars Qualifier”, first given to him by reporters at PokerStars Blog. He embroidered the slogan on his shirt, which by this point also bore the patches of Team PokerStars Pro.

Neuville continued to pick up high-ranking results.

He finished second in two EPT Main Events, defeated heads-up first by Antonio Mathias in Vilamoura in 2009 and then by Mickey Petersen in Copenhagen in 2012. He was also runner up in two WSOP bracelet events and in an EPT High Roller in Malta in 2016.

Neuville received a Lifetime Achievement award at the Global Poker Awards in 2015, which, remarkably, came before he even travelled to Las Vegas to play the WSOP Main Event that year. In collecting the award, he declare prophetically “The best is yet to come!”

Neuville was always a tremendous player to watch at the tables and to interview, and below are a few short features published by PokerStars Blog with Neuville as the centre of attention.

He tells us, among other things, about the medical tests he underwent that prove poker keeps you young; about crossing swords with Fedor Holz; and he plays “Poker Champ” with us. He even wrote an occasional column for this site, reproduced below as “Musings of the Serial Online Qualifier”.

Neuville was great fun to be around.

In 2015 Neuville told us, “I want to continue playing for another 20 years.” He didn’t quite make it that far, but was still playing high-profile tournaments in the final year of his life.

PokerStars Blog is greatly saddened by the loss of Neuville and offers condolences to his family and friends. In the words of his countryman Kenny Hallaert, “A legend of the Belgian has unfortunately left us.”

November Nine just part of poker plan for Pierre Neuville

By Martin Harris
Barcelona, August 21, 2015

“It’s just a paradise.”

A smiling Pierre Neuville waves a hand as he speaks, indicating the throng of people — hundreds — filing out of the tournament area alongside of us. We walk toward the food station, a quick bowl of soup during the break being Neuville’s immediate goal.

The amiable Belgian has other, longer-term goals at present, of course, including winning the 2015 World Series of Poker Main Event. From a field of 6,420 players just nine remain, and Neuville is one of them. He’ll be fourth in chips when play resumes in November.

At 72, Pierre Neuville is the oldest ever November Niner.

“You know, I’m surprised,” he continues, not needing to be asked a question to share his thoughts.

“Yesterday I was in the satellite, and many people asked me — ten times I got the question, even from the media: ‘You are still playing a satellite? Why do you need to play a satellite?'”

Before this year’s WSOP, one of Neuville’s greatest claims to fame in poker had been his unique success at satelliting, earning the nickname “the serial qualifier” and in fact winning the EPT’s Online Qualifier of the Year award in Season 8. He’s also picked up a Lifetime Achievement Award at the European Poker Awards earlier this year in Malta.

“I found that a very strange question,” he continues. “I said, ‘of course, I love to play satellites.’ But they say, ‘noooo, you are November Nine!'”

For Neuville, making the November Nine hardly means he can now play less poker. Rather, it means he can play more.

“If I wasn’t enjoying, I should stay home, eh?”

As he did in Las Vegas this summer, Neuville negotiated his way through another huge field here in Barcelona a year ago in the Estrellas Main Event, finishing 36th of 2,560.

“Today, it’s the same thing,” he goes on. “They say, ‘Ah, you are not going to play Estrellas…!’ And I say, ‘Of course I am!'”

As the food line gets shorter, the conversation turns to how things have gone for Neuville so far today, and again his new status as a WSOP Main Event final tablist seems to be affecting how others are responding to his actions.

“At the table, I bluff two times. People say ‘Why do you spend your time bluffing here in a small tournament?'” There’s a pause. Then it comes — the same punch line: “‘You are November Nine!'”

But what they don’t realize is, Neuville plays every tournament — from the smallest satellite to the Estrellas to the WSOP Main Event — with the same enthusiasm and passion. “Once I’m sitting in a poker tournament, I don’t mind the buy-in,” he says. “I just stay and try to play the best game I can. And enjoy it.”

As if to further the point that Neuville can bluff as well here in Barcelona as he can when on poker’s biggest stage, he shares the story of a memorable hand from the latter stages of the WSOP Main Event, one that happened when there were 36 players left.

Neuville opened a pot and was called from the blinds by 2014 WCOOP Main Event champion Fedor “CrownUpGuy” Holz. Then after the flop came eight-high Holz check-called a c-bet from Neuville. Both then checked a trey on the turn.

The river was a deuce, making it five small cards on the board. Holz led with a bet, and Neuville raised big.
“It took seven minutes!” remembered Neuville, shaking his head.

“He’s very smart… I know that he’s a good observer. Ten times he was taking his chips, just pushing and watching.” He went on to detail further the extent of Holz’s scrutiny of him.

“He was looking for something, some difference,” explains Neuville. “Joy of folding… or fear of calling.”
Finally Holz let his hand go — an overpair of nines, Neuville explained. That’s when Neuville showed his unimproved ace-king, earning a huge laughing response from the table.

“I thought he won’t believe I put my tournament at risk on this hand,” he adds, noting as well how partly because Holz folded rather than called, Holz would finish 25th while Neuville’s WSOP Main Event run continues.

“It goes a lot different,” he concludes, referring to the non-occurrence of Holz calling.

At last at the front of the line, Neuville orders his soup, then turns his attention back to longer term goals.

“My dream is just to be able to play another 20 years,” he laughs, then looks back around at the crowd of people around us.

Pierre Neuville not going gentle…

By Brad Willis
PCA, January 2013

By today’s poker standards, Pierre Neuville is an old man. He will turn 70 while here at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure.

Neuville has felt the physical strain of getting older–the mental fatigue and the deviations from life’s routines that come with everything else that surrounds advancing age. Even he, an optimist among optimists, will admit he probably isn’t as good as he wants to be.

“I am convinced I have not taken full advantage of my potential,” he said.

This comes from at a time when Neuville sits at #6 on the all-time European Poker Tour leaderboard. He’s in the Global Poker Index’s top 300 and is the oldest person among those top players. He played 42 consecutive EPT events without missing one. He’s won $1.5 million in live tournaments over the past five years. He created a commercial board game in his late 60s. He is an unstoppable machine, if one that might be a little rusty.

Today Neuville plays in Day 1B of the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure. He is one of those PokerStars players who is so often on our radar that he almost blends into the background like a painting you see on a wall every day. It took offending him to make his radar blip start flashing on our screen again.

Neuville, one of PokerStars’ most loyal friends and a man we once dubbed the Serial Qualifier, took umbrage at the fact he wasn’t included in the select list of players in the PCA Last Longer promotion.

“It seems that you forgot the elder of the team,” he said.

It was all explained away quickly (the contest was made up of just a few players), but it evolved into a discussion of Neuville’s age, something that is clearly at the front of his mind. His advance into the world of septuagenarians came as sort of a shock.

“I can hardly believe it myself,” he said.

But, Neauville has a secret. He’s been working with a coach that’s been helping him improve his physical and mental health. Neuville has lost a few pounds and cut back on a lot of the outside stressors that had been bugging him. He works out three to five times a week, even when he’s on the road for a tournament.

“Who knows?” he said with a trademark wryness. “Maybe I will be the Last Longer Team PokerStars player at the PCA.”

He’s not just talking about poker. Neuville doesn’t see himself leaving this world anytime soon. Not only does he plan on keeping his heart beating for a long time, but he’s treating his poker game like it is a new study, reworking his technique, analyzing his notes, and adapting to the ever-changing game.

“My objective is not really to be compared to other seniors,” he said. “I want to proof to the senior players among us that our potential has no limits whatever our age. It is time that we get rid of that age complex.”

Neuville’s fellow seniors are taking notice. They get in touch to ask him his secrets. They are the people he wants to reach. As he sees it, seniors are a huge and often untapped poker market–people with more time and money than younger people. But, he says, they are afraid of playing the younger set…and they shouldn’t be.

And so he battles on, continuing to climb up the EPT leaderboard, maintaining his spot in the GPI, and working to secure a title for his generation.

“Poker is a world where youngsters are winning,” Neuville conceded. “However, it is certainly positive to prove that poker can help improve the physical and mental condition. It’s never too late to win.”

Pierre Neuville, proving how poker keeps you young

PCA, January 2012
By Martin Harris

Pierre Neuville is, by some way, the oldest player in the High Roller field. We know this not because he looks in any way ancient, but because he just told us it is his 69th birthday today. While many retired gentlemen of a certain age may be happy to stay at home with their slippers in front a log fire, Neuville is today going toe-to-toe with some of the fiercest young poker players on the planet. And he laid $25,000 on the line to do so.

Neuville is something of a trailblazer; I have discovered he is currently undergoing regular medical tests that should go on to prove that when you get to a certain age in life, playing poker will make you younger, at least in a mental and physical way. I’m not kidding; this is not some far-fetched fantasy, but part of a real study by proper medical folk at a scientific medical center back in Brugge, Belgium.

It started some years ago when Neuville thought he may be losing his memory a little. Though not unusual for a man of a certain age, Neuville was understandably concerned and went for specialist tests, six hours worth of physical and mental examinations that give a ‘true age’ as opposed to an individual’s genuine age. Neuville was asked to return every six months for the tests to be repeated so any changes could be noted.

The results have been staggering: in the course of the past two years, Neuville’s ‘true age’, as determined by the tests, has fallen 18 months since he first went. Simple math tells you, therefore, that he is now, physically and mentally at least, 3.5 years younger than he was when he first walked through the medical experts’ door two years ago.

So excited are the men at the center that have now asked Neuville to keep coming back every six months at no expense; they believe they will gather enough evidence to produce a paper showing that playing poker can not only keep you mentally alert, it can improve your faculties.

This would be wonderful news for Team PokerStars Pro Neuville, who has long been an inspiration for people of a certain age wanting to play poker.

“At first many people who were retired like me were telling me I was too old to play poker,” Neuville said. “But now they have seen what I have done, and now they too would like to try and qualify for PokerStars EPT events. It’s funny, no one wants to be the oldest, but let’s be honest, with me around there is no danger of that – not even for Barry Greenstein!”

Neuville always believed playing poker would help keep him young. He became rather good at it, and finishing runner-up at EPT Vilamoura in 2009 for a $384,000 score was a stand-out performance in total live tournament winnings of more than $1 million in just a few years. But what has also made Neuville’s name is his ‘Serial PokerStars Qualifier’ tag that I first gave him some years ago, thanks to his extraordinary habit of qualifying online for just about every PokerStars live event going. As well as his Team Pro patch, his shirt also sports his home made Serial PokerStars Qualifier logo.

“The tests I have been getting have given me extra belief that playing poker not only keeps you young, but makes you younger. I see it in all areas – where I used to struggle playing two tables online at once, I can now play three with no problem.

“The doctors say this is encouraging, which is why they want me to keep going for six-monthly tests to confirm what the results over the first two years have shown… mentally and physically at least, I am getting younger! Normally, once you reach about 66 years old, your mind starts slowing down; it’s the natural thing to happen. But for me, mine is proving to get more active.

“The doctors have given me extra dietary tips, and of course advise me not to smoke or drink, but they need not worry, I am careful about that. They are excited to think that in a couple more years they can produce a study that shows that playing poker can help your mental and physical ability. It will be great to prove it!”

Being a man of certain age has benefits at the table for Neuville. He explained: “When I sit down, a young player who does not know me will look at me and think, ‘Who is this old guy? What is he doing here?’ They play me in a way that is profitable for me, but it does not take them long to realise I know what I am doing.

“I am living a bit of a dream. To be playing in this $25,000 High Roller event on this, my 69th birthday, is amazing. I feel very lucky, but I know it is something others can do. I hope I am inspiration to older people to feel they can do this, too. It does not have to be a young person’s game.”

Neuville starts this event in the Bahamas in traditional fashion, stuck as he is between two of poker’s most fearsome young guns. On his right? Team PokerStars Pro Vanessa Selbst. On his left? None other than new WSOP world champion and fellow Team PokerStars Pro Pius Heinz.

As we have explained, however, that does not faze Neuville one bit. In fact, a couple of towers of green, 25 chips suggest he’s been the more active at this table in the early levels. Watch out for the old timer, folks.

Happy birthday, Pierre, from Team PokerStars Blog (proved by medics to slow down mentally and physically after a couple of years in the job).

From one Poker Champ to another

Berlin, April 2012
By Stephen Bartley

Part of the charm of Pierre Neuville is that he plays poker the way we all would were their not gobs of money involved. The Team PokerStars Pro plays with a joy that’s as hard to rival as it is to dislike, which, along with a career in the board games business, makes him the ideal person to create a poker game – “Poker Champ” – which we had the pleasure of trying out last night, along with local Riesling from the hotel bar.

The game is essentially poker, without betting or money, created for any age group that can understand what a flush is (for those that don’t it’s written down on a handy card). The aim to win Poker Champ trophies in a series of regular poker hands. As Neuville himself said, it’s a game you can laugh at, with visual clues on the back of each playing card allowing you to make what would ordinarily be improbably reads. As they say; those that can’t do are happy to play board games which make them think they can.

Needless to say it was not about the winning, although Rick Dacey, who like me could hear the voice of Pierre in his head as we played, thought otherwise as he posed for pictures with his winner’s trophy (as dictated in the rules of Poker Champ). Instead it was a chance to laugh at poor reads, hopeless hands and the odd slow roll.

It took Neuville 14 months to turn his idea into a physical product, which was trialled at Namur Casino in Belgium, where casino managers apparently cleared the regulars from the card room in order to play multi-table Poker Champ.

Neuville took 50 courtesy copies with him to this world premiere. At the end of the night the Casino were dispatching cars to bring more from the warehouse 100km away.

It’s to Neuville’s credit, not to mention his long suffering wife Claudine.

Musings of the Serial PokerStars Qualifier

By Pierre Neuville
March 2010

Pierre Neuville, dubbed the Serial PokerStars Qualifier by the PokerStars Blog scribes, is in the running to win the top qualifier prize at this year’s EPT awards, thanks to satelliting his way in to seemingly every event this year. Here, the retired businessman from Belgium talks about his race for the trophy…

“Of course I am very excited about the race for best PokerStars qualifier. There are many rankings in the poker world, but they all separate the two categories: the live and the online.

It is a genius idea of PokerStars to bring these two together, mixing the online qualification and subsequent EPT results to create a points leader board.

No points are attributed when you get in the money at an EPT but did not qualify for the event online. Also qualifying but then not getting in the money has little effect – so it’s the synergy of both qualifying online and getting in the money that is a real discovery.

I think of the millions of passionate players from over 100 countries who try to qualify for the EPT. So this new challenge for the award of the “best” of the mix online/live is a real world event. This new idea has a bright future. I think many players will like to take on this challenge in the future. And yes, I confess, I am very excited to be in the running for the first award!

This has a surprising impact on the players aged over 50 like me, as everybody was expecting the younger internet guys to top the ranking. The fact that an old ‘Mr Nobody’ from the internet is not doing all that bad is a wonderful stimulant for all the other older players who would like to play online, especially as my generation suffers a bit from the amazing results from the internet generation.

I have received encouragements from all over Europe after being the oldest runner-up in EPT history in Villamoura. But with this new challenge, I surprisingly receive even more questions and support. Questions such as:

Are you a computer specialist? No, not at all. My knowledge is limited to my small portable PC.

Do you use tracker software? No sophisticated techniques for me – my memory notes are the only support.

Are you a professional? Of course not! I am a retired businessman, with just one passion: the love of poker!

The encouraging messages I receive are moving. One may say: “My dream is to qualify one day for a EPT event. I never dared before but now I will certainly try.” Another: “You realize my dream 10 times!”

Forums like ‘Wallonie Poker’ have even made me their member of honour. Their fan club watches my qualifications online closely every evening. They comment and celebrate my achievements on PokerStars. And they suffer my bad beats with me! Sometimes it is almost as though I am playing for a home team. They are an audience of friends and connoisseurs. After a game, we exchange our views. It is really very captivating.

It would make me very happy if I could convince my fellow ‘older’ competitors that, yes, we can also play poker on the internet and compete with the very best.

Even if a poker tournament is an excellent activity, well under control and quite educational for the young ones, the modern game now is overall the perfect activity for a retired person. Everybody can afford to play poker nowadays: it is either for free or for a small amount of euro’s one can play all day.

An anti-aging doctor would tell you: stay active, keep your mind busy, look for a new challenge in life… continue progressing. Well, poker brings me all of that. Every day I do two hours of theoretical research to look for progress, and four hours of practice.

Who – at the age of 60 – is still trying to educate his mind? Who at that age is still looking for the challenge of improvement in various areas? For the sake of poker, I am still searching every day to upscale my physical condition (which by the way needs it) as well as my concentration capacity. Trying to push my audacity to a higher level but at the same time remain constantly vigilant!

The object is also to keep my emotions under control and minimize my expressions during (unfortunately, yes that happens) numerous deceptions. I am living in a permanent state of self-education that makes me feel younger every day!

Thanks to you all – young genius poker players, EPT organizers, PokerStars staff, and passionate reporters and photographers.

You make my day! (my days, actually).

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