Life's a royal flush for Britain's world poker king

Dave Ulliott, a former stand-up comic, bricklayer and lorry driver, has favourite gags to describe his upbringing on a tough estate in Hull. There's the one about the box of batteries his father sent him one Christmas; the note said "Toys not included", and another about their house, "So small we had to paint the furniture on the walls".

They help explain his delight yesterday as a Lexus dealership in the city fitted a personalised plate (3DU) on his latest £30,000 convertible. The car, along with Ulliott's three-litre model and Porsche, are trappings of an extraordinary five-year record on the world's poker tables, which has culminated in his biggest purse yet, $589,000 (£358,000), for seeing off a field of 160 players in the Jack Binion World Poker Open at Tunica, Mississippi.

Ulliott is not a household name in Hull but few faces are more recognisable in the poker world, He is so feared they call him Devilfish, after a poisonous specimen which, he says, "will kill you if not prepared properly". The 48-year-old, married and with three children, entered poker's big league in 1997.

Ulliott did not begin the Binion final with a great hand of cards; a pair of 10s, sevens and fours was as good as it got. But he had amassed a third of the available chips on his way to the final and bluffed his way through with it. "The great thing about this game is that ordinary people can make it," he said in Hull yesterday. "As long as you've got some chips and are capable of bluffing, you can achieve things. You've got to be able to read people. You have to be selectively aggressive and not afraid to put money on a bluff. There's a lot of big talk from the poker players who write the books, but you see them all make mistakes."

He started by winning £1,000 in a card school as a 17-year-old and staking it on on horse at York. From there, he graduated to playing snooker for £1,000 a frame at the Monica Rooms in Hull, where he still owns a pawnbroking business. He took up serious poker in 1996 and three years later won £40,000 in the Channel 4 competition, watched by 1.7 million insomniacs in the final. He also won the 1997 World Championships and 2002 World Poker Open.

His pearls of wisdom include: never play with more than 10 per cent of your "tank" (total playing money) in one session; don't bluff a mug. You can bluff a good player, but not a bad one; try to keep the same expression (to prevent an opponent knowing what you're thinking); and win the maximum, lose the minimum (stay in the game if you're winning, but cut your losses fast if you're losing big time).

"You can get bad luck for a few weeks, but you just keep going until you win again," he said. "There's no point worrying when you lose."