Asher Conniff spent a lot of time in the past playing poker and honing his skills. Yet he found it hard to win big events and pull in huge piles of cash. His career earnings at the start of Jan 2015 was around $188,000 and Conniff was determined to start making more money playing poker.

The Brooklyn native has had a spectacular run in April first winning the $203,000 jackpot on the 20th of April at the Borgata’s Spring Poker Open opening event. Conniff was supposed to go on a family vacation and enjoy his success but instead he decided to skip his vacation and spend some more time at the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa.

He decided to register an online $1,000 high-roller event which was being conducted on Borgata’s online poker room. However he clicked the wrong button and instead of registering for the online event, he ended up registering for a big-bucks Atlantic City poker tournament. He tried to speak to the concerned authorities at the Borgata but they told him the amount was non refundable and he had to play the big-bucks event.

Conniff decided to give it a shot and along with 239 players completed for a prize that was close to a million dollars. During the final table, Conniff faced Brian Yoon, Tony Dunst, Ray Qartomy, Carlos Mortensen and Alexander Lakhov; players who had all earned well over a million in prize money. Conniff had an amazing run and managed to outlast all of the competition and win the main event along with a cash prize of $973,000.

After winning the event, Conniff said “If I was some random person looking at my numbers, nothing in my stats says that I should do this. But I’m not that surprised because I threw myself into the game and worked my tail off, so in my heart I knew how good I am. It’s definitely validating”.

Conniff has now accumulated over a million in prize money and has set his sights on winning a World Series Of Poker (WSOP) bracelet. He wants to continue to work at his game and improve and see if he can one day win the main event of the WSOP. Conniff will now take a small break from the game and head off for his family vacation, where he will use some of the money to treat his family to a good time.