Foosball Champ Billy Pappas Returns to WSOP Main Event

The World Series of Poker $10,000 Main Event reached the dinner break in Day 1B with a sizable field spread across the Amazon, Brasilia and Miranda Rooms. Hidden in the third room, only catching attention because of his trademark green Yoshi hat, Billy Pappas is back at the Main Event after gaining notoriety with his fifth place run in the 2014 Main Event.

Pappas, aka William Pappaconstantinou, was an outlier of that final table – a foosball champion with a perma-grin on his face contrasted against the seriousness of Martin Jacobson, Jorryt van Hoof and Mark Newhouse. When other players consulted their rail during breaks getting feedback on previous hands, Pappas mostly sat at the table alone waiting for action to pick back up.

Pappas’ poker results since his final table run have been haphazard at best. He cashed twice in 2015 for $1,440 in two $350 buy-in events in Florida and Foxwoods. He returned to Las Vegas in 2016 and cashed in a $235 Rio Daily Deepstacks event and then finished 60th in the Planet Hollywood Goliath event.

Poker clearly hasn’t been a priority for Pappas. “I haven’t been up to much,” Pappas said before going on dinner break. “I’ve been on a long vacation.”

“Poker has always been a secondary interest for me,” he added. “I don’t consider myself a pro or anything like that. I don’t think I could go out there and make a living doing it.”

Pappas had an average stack at the time of the interview and hasn’t had any huge spots on the day. “I think everything has changed since 2014,” he said. “I can’t really apply anything because people seem to play a little bit differently with me now. It was a lot easier when no one knew who I was.”

Check below for some of Pappas’ foosball trick shots.