Brooklyn poker player accidentally enters $15,000 tournament, wins $973,000

A Brooklyn man won nearly $1 million in a poker tournament he entered by mistake.

Asher Conniff hauled in $973,000 after winning the World Poker Tour World Championship at the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in Atlantic City, New Jersey in April. The win came only one week after he won more than $200,000 in a separate tournament.

The 25-year-old qualified for the April 29 tournament by clicking on the wrong tournament on the Borgata's website, he told the New York Daily News.

He then first had to win a 2,400-person satellite (qualifying) tournament to even be eligible for the championship, which had a $15,000 buy-in.

The relatively unknown poker player has now won nearly $1.4 million over the past three weeks after winning only $188,000 over his entire career until April, according to the Hendon Mob, a website that tracks poker players' career earnings.

Then, he more than doubled his career earnings by winning $203,231 in a separate April 20 tournament.

When asked by the paper if he thought he was destined to win the big event, Conniff said: "It's funny because normally you'd say that. But I had literally just won a 2,400-person field tournament - my luck had to run out sooner or later."

Conniff had to overcome a final table with five poker veterans - Tony Dunst, Brian Yoon, Carlos Mortensen, Ray Qartomy and Alexander Lakhov, the runner-up - to take the crown, according to the Borgata event blog.

Here's how described his strategy:

I needed to be all-in or fold, so to speak. I decided to go for it and cut the B.S. and go 100%. 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's biggest score prior to last month was a $42,182 jackpot won in November 2012, also at the Borgata, according to the Hendon Mob.