Boris Becker at a PokerStars live event. Credit: Neil Stoddart / Rational Intellectual Holdings.
Six-time Grand Slam winner Boris Becker is releasing a memoir, and the book includes insight into his time behind bars.
While the German was incarcerated, he spent quite a bit of time playing cards with fellow inmates. As a result, the former PokerStars ambassador owed a few unsavory characters some cash.
Becker was convicted of tax evasion in 2022 in the United Kingdom and was sentenced to two and a half years in prison. However, the authorities released him after he served eight months.
In a recent interview with a German media outlet, Becker detailed a prison poker game that led to even more issues for the three-time Wimbledon champ.
Cards In The Clink
Becker said poker offered a way to pass the time and get his mind off his surroundings. On the other hand, one game left him owing Romanian prisoners £500.
According to Becker, the debt was a big deal to the Romanians. As a result, he had one of his friends outside prison send the money to stave off any negative repercussions.
“I had played poker professionally after tennis, so I thought, ‘What could go wrong?'” Becker said to a reporter for SZ-Magazin. “But I was playing with real criminals who came into my cell and threatened me if I didn’t pay.”
He detailed the experience in his new book called Inside. He added that incarceration “eats away at your soul and boils your mind.”
Becker said some prisoners would scream throughout the night, which only added to his uneasiness.
“By October, I was sleeping in my tracksuit and socks,” he said. “Some nights it was so cold in my cell that I slept in two jackets and two pairs of socks, wrapping a towel around my head. I lost seven kilos in the first four weeks.”
At the tables, Becker racked up $117,140 in live tournament winnings. Those figures shrivel up compared to what he earned as an athlete. According to official records from the ATP Tour, Becker’s career prize money was nearly $25.1 million.
Other Poker Players Doing Time
Becker isn’t the only poker player to run afoul of the law in recent years.
