It’s been a long time since Will Kassouf was making happy headlines in poker, especially in terms of winning a major tournament, but this weekend he is doing exactly that by taking down the Irish Poker Master Main Event, winning €215,163 in the process.

It feels like about 20 years since Kassouf was courting controversy in the 2016 WSOP Main Event (yes it really was only four years ago). Back then, it was arguments with Griffin Benger, stand-offs with tournament director Jack Effel and of course, the infamous “Nine High Like a Boss” hand:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THA5LjEyW9UVideo can’t be loaded because JavaScript is disabled: Nine-High, Like a Boss | 2016 WSOP Main Event: Day 5 | PokerGO (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THA5LjEyW9U)

Flash forward 50 months and it is a very different story. There has, of course, been an awful lot of water under several bridges since then. Kassouf, who became a Grosvenor Poker pro, was a one-man poker brand in the year that followed his utterance of that nine-high hand. He was everywhere, and for everywhere was lost in the ‘Black Mirror’ of technological celebrity.