Finishing 22nd in the 2010 World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event for $317,000, William Thorson was one of two Swedes remaining when Day 7 began on Friday, July 16th (Niklas Toorell was the other). Thorson has dominated the PokerStars-sponsored European Poker Tour (EPT), turning in a third place in the 2006 Irish Masters in Dublin for over $230,000.
2010 isn’t Thorson’s first deep run in the WSOP Main Event. In 2006, which went down as the largest Main Event in history, Thorson took 13th place and banked nearly $1 million; Jamie Gold earned 12 times that amount for winning the tournament. In 2007, he used a small portion of his newfound earnings to enter a $5,000 Limit Hold’em event at the WSOP, where he cashed for $136,000.
In 2008, Thorson was up to his winning ways once again on the live poker circuit. In the Bahamas at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, he finished ninth in the EPT Main Event and collected $120,000. Three months later across “The Pond,” Thorson grabbed sixth in EPT San Remo and boosted his already lucrative bankroll by $222,000.
In the 2009 EPT Dortmund stop, Thorson made the final table of the Main Event and finished seventh. That cash was good for $147,000 in the tournament that saw Sandra Naujoks become just the second woman ever to win an EPT feature tournament. In Monte Carlo to conclude the same season of the EPT, Thorson finished sixth in the High-Roller Championship for $130,000.
He won the Main Event of the PokerStars Baltic Festival in Tallinn, Estonia for $98,000, his last major tournament score leading up to the 2010 WSOP Main Event. He holds the fifth largest stack entering Day 7 at 6.53 million and is one of five non-Americans in the top eight in chips.
When he’s not tearing up the poker felts, Thorson can be found riding and training horses. He’s a member of Team PokerStars Pro.