A BASINGSTOKE man battled with professional poker players to win more than £10,000 at a tournament in Australia.

Ian Thomson, 24, a former pupil at The Vyne Community School, finished ninth in the Australia and New Zealand Poker Tour competition, which was held in Melbourne.

Despite it being his first large poker tournament, the former Oakridge resident made it to the final table.

On the first day, he was up against 843 other players, and 100 on the second, before making it to the final nine to play for a share of the tournament’s £507,581 prize pool.

He said: “I was delighted. There were some big professional poker players there, including some who have got up to $20million (Australian dollars) in poker winnings.”

Mr Thomson, a carpenter, left Basingstoke four years ago to go travelling and has ended up in Brisbane in Australia, where some of his family live.

He said: “I had never played a game of poker in my life before I went travelling.

“It is a very big thing in Australia, and there are regular poker tournaments held in pubs.

“I ended up playing pub poker not taking it too seriously and then a couple of years later I decided to enter a bigger tournament.

“I have always thought I was good, I just try and improve all the time and read books on it. It’s only in the last year that I have taken it seriously.”

He said he will keep the money to save to buy a house, although he said he could be tempted to continue playing in the big tournaments.

His mother Joanne Hall, of Maple Crescent, Oakridge, kept up to date with the tournament via live updates from Mr Thomson’s girlfriend on Facebook.

Mrs Hall said: “We are all proud of him. He has done so well coming ninth. It would have been amazing to get a bit more.”