Ex-Con Joe Reddick Now A Rising Poker Star

For seven years, high school dropout Joe Reddick used to make up to $100,000 per month selling heroin and crack cocaine from his west Bronx apartment. In his early 20s, however, Reddick was subsequently arrested and between 1992 and 2008 served time behind bars. That gave Reddick more than ample time to reflect upon the errors of his ways, and subsequently turn his passion towards a more positive avenue of exploration, namely the game of poker.
Life spent in 11 federal prisons along the East Coast also gave him plenty of opportunities to hone his poker skills, and as Reddick explains:
“At first, it was a time-killer. Then it became a passion. I would play all day, all night, seven days a week. I became infamous. Any prison I arrived at, they knew there was going to be a big poker game going on.”
Before evolving as a player, Reddick said he lost around “$7,000 worth of Snickers bars”, but soon after he managed to learn the intricacies of the game, and in addition to cleaning up against his fellow inmates, he even started running his own table. By the time he was released back into the community, Joe Reddick said he headed straight for the Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, and after turning his $500 bundle into $2,500 he “never looked back.”
Now aged 47, Joe Reddick has earned $590,282 playing live tournaments, and at the end of January achieved his biggest score to date after taking down Event #10 of the Borgata Winter Poker Open series, the $450 buy-in $1 Million Deep Stack, for a payout of $217,792. In addition to tournaments, Reddick says he has won roughly another $1 million playing cash poker games at the casino.
Reddick’s priorities these days involves winning enough money to provide for his five children, with any extra earnings then ploughed back into funding his poker lifestyle. Inspired by his latest victory, Reddick also aspires to win many more tournaments, and has his sights now firmly  set on the biggest prize of them all, the WSOP Main Event. He says he wants to be the tournament’s first ever African-American champion, and as he explains:
“That’s the dream. I won’t stop until I win it.”