The online poker world was fixated at the micro-stakes games last week, as Joey “JoeIngram1” Ingram won a lucrative prop bet that involved setting the world record for number of hands played.  The prop bet wasn’t all about simple volume, but also required Ingram to show a profit over the 50,000 hands played within a 24-hour period at the 25nl ($0.10-$0.25) games.  Once he accomplished the feat, Ingram took in over $30,000 in side money.  Poker News Daily met with Ingram to discuss his place in poker history and what the future holds for this massive multi-tabler.

Poker News Daily: Congratulations on setting the world record for number of hands played in a day.  When you were younger, did you ever imagine you’d set a world record for anything?

Ingram: No, definitely not. I should point out that I also have the world record for hands played in a month at 604,000, so having both records is a huge deal for me.  It’s something I’m really proud of.

PND: Can you talk about the development of your prop bet and how you managed to get so much action on it?

Ingram: I managed to get all of this action because I played a 25,000 hand session, I was down, and people saw that on Poker Table Ratings.  My profile also showed that I had lost 20+ buy-ins in a session in the past.  Since I had that history, people were just lining up to give me action.  I was just trying to get in hands to see if I could accomplish the goal of 50,000 while just playing a C-level game.

PND: What were your emotions in the hours leading up to the start of your challenge?  Did you do anything special to prepare for it?

Ingram: I was super excited to just try it and see if I could make money during this challenge.  I was hoping I wouldn’t fail because I would have lost a lot of money if I didn’t come through on the bet.  It’s not like when I played sports earlier in life; this time, money was involved and I would have lost something like $12,000.

PND: Did you think after you accomplished the feat that you would get such widespread notoriety and publicity?

Ingram: Oh no, definitely not.  I never expected there to be articles around the internet and hearing about it on newscasts like PokerRoad.  There are sites in every language that have a story about my accomplishment.  I never thought this story would be so popular.

PND: With the prop bet done, what’s in the works for 2010 and is there another challenge for you in the future?

Ingram: I am probably thinking of doing a prop bet playing six-max and showing a profit while putting in one million hands in a month.  I am looking to get about $100,000 in prop bet action on that, but right now I am experimenting to see if I can actually pull it off.  It’ll have a requirement to play at minimum of 25nl, but it’ll also most likely encompass 50nl and 100nl tables.

PND: How likely do you think that someone will be breaking your record in the next six months?  How will you feel should your record be broken?

Ingram: Technically, Chiren already played 58,000 hands, but he didn’t make any money, so a lot of people aren’t considering that to be the record.  If someone broke my record, no one is going to get the action I got, so they will just be walking away with what they win, like $100.  For me, I made a ton of money, so I’ll be laughing the whole time I watch it happen.  The reason people are talking about me is because of the prop bet.

PND: You’ve put in massive amounts of hands and been a little over breakeven. Will you continue to work along that path or focus on playing fewer tables at a higher win-rate?

Ingram: On Poker Table Ratings, I’m 2.2BB/100 24-tabling six-max and I’m going to focus on that mainly in the future.  It makes so much more sense for me to play six-max since my game is better suited there, so I’ll be shifting over to that game since I’m showing such a bigger profit.  A lot of people have been telling me to shift to that game for a while.

PND: In terms of accomplishments in poker history, where does yours stand?

Ingram: I don’t know but I don’t think it’s really all that high up there.  It’s definitely not up to snuff with the Moneymaker effect; it’s just an achievement for multi-tabling and I made a bunch of money doing it.

PND Apparently, you have fans now.  Do you have anything to say to them?

I still get plenty of PMs on TwoPlusTwo and some that follow my blog.  I’m known for quite a few things these days, so I get people contacting me all of the time.  Most are quite positive and leave encouraging messages and I really appreciate their support.  I really am honored that people throw my name out there when people talk about the best 24-tabler.  It’s all very cool.

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