“In high school, I needed another competitive outlet,” said Buddiga. “One of my best friends from back home started looking at Pocket Fives and was getting into poker. I started going over to his house and playing.”
Buddiga was born in New Zealand but grew up in Colorado Springs, Colorado. After graduating high school he attended Duke University in North Carolina.“I dropped poker for a bit when I was going to college because I was so busy but then I picked it up again during my junior year.”
Buddiga focused on playing online and has slowly improved his results.“I started to do really well online just before Black Friday,” said Buddiga. “It was bad timing because I felt my game was just beginning to peak.”
Knowing that he had to play the WSOP, Buddiga saved some cash and found several friends that were willing to stake him in a few events and got on a plane to Las Vegas.“I think a lot of the skills I learned from the spelling bee – putting in a lot of hard work, determination and never giving up – have really helped me with poker.
The biggest thing was that after the spelling bee I really felt like I could be the best at anything if I really try.”
Buddiga finished in 93rd place out of 1440 entries in the $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em Shootout tournament at the World Series of Poker. He collected $4,998 for his finish and plans on playing other a number of other WSOP events.The biggest thing was that after the spelling bee I really felt like I could be the best at anything if I really try.”
“The spelling bee was super stressful but it was just one competition,” said Buddiga. “In live tournaments it’s so much more stressful because of how much longer it is.
"I also don’t feel I’m as good a poker player as I was a speller back in the day.”
Having just graduated from Duke, the 22-year-old mentioned he found playing in big buy-in poker tournaments to be even more stressful than competing in the National Spelling Bee."I also don’t feel I’m as good a poker player as I was a speller back in the day.”
“If it goes well I might jump into poker,” said Buddiga.
