Talkative Hawkins wants to add WSOP bracelet to solid resume

The man with the Iowa Hawkeyes logo on the side of his cap approached Maurice Hawkins and politely asked if he could introduce himself.

After briefly reminiscing about playing together at the recent World Series of Poker circuit stop in Council Bluffs, Iowa, Michael Lang of Waukee, Iowa, started to walk away.

“I’m a fan now,” Lang said before leaving.

“Hey, I appreciate that,” Hawkins replied. “And I’m going to keep giving you something to be a fan of.”

Hawkins is one of the most colorful characters on the tournament poker circuit, with a brash, love-him-or-hate-him playing style and the results to back it up.

The loquacious former college football player will try for his second consecutive deep run in the WSOP’s $1,500 buy-in “Monster Stack” No-limit Hold ’em event when it opens Friday at the Rio Convention Center.

“I’m the guy at the family gathering, maybe I say too much sometimes. Maybe I’m a little bit too honest,” Hawkins said. “I’m the guy that kind of lives on the edge, but you need that guy to be around. I always try to enjoy myself, and I try to enjoy myself when I’m at the table.”

Hawkins was an all-district defensive end at Pattonville (Missouri) High School and started his career at Alabama A&M before transferring to Bethune-Cookman, where he played linebacker and special teams in 2001 and 2002. He later transferred to St. Thomas University and graduated from the school in Miami Gardens, Florida, in 2004 with a degree in biology.

As a student at St. Thomas, Hawkins started playing sit-and-go tournaments at the nearby Seminole Hard Rock casino and soon became a regular in the South Florida poker scene.

“I saw that Texas Hold ’em was a game I could use aggression to win in,” Hawkins said. “And from a football background, you know how aggression is what we feed off of.”

Hawkins has seven career WSOP circuit rings (tied for fifth all time), and the 36-year-old resident of West Palm Beach, Florida, has more than $2.2 million in career live tournament earnings since 2005, according to Global Poker Index’s Hendon Mob Poker Database.

Despite his success, it’s Hawkins’ relentless table talk that seems to attract most of the attention.

“I would like to say it’s a lot of psychological things going on, because it is. But most of the time I’m just bored and I want to liven it up,” Hawkins said. “You have to be really intelligent to be able to talk and play poker, so let’s start with that. And I would say more than half the people that play poker aren’t that intelligent.”

In early April during a monthslong downswing, Hawkins made a rare visit to St. Louis to see his mother and sister. Inspired by the trip, Hawkins predicted on Twitter he would win two events that month.

He won three.

Hawkins took down the “Monster Stack” tournament and Main Event in Council Bluffs — Lang was third in that Main Event, incidentally. He then won the Main Event at Harrah’s Cherokee in North Carolina two weeks later to become the first player to win back-to-back main events in the circuit’s 12-year history.

“That’s never going to be done again, first of all, let me state that,” Hawkins said. “And, that makes me iconic, which thus makes me happy, because that means that I have a part in history.”

Hawkins was 19th in last year’s “Monster Stack” event that drew 7,192 entrants and made the final table of the “Millionaire Maker” event in 2014 before finishing ninth.

Those results have Hawkins optimistic that he is getting closer to winning his first WSOP bracelet.

“As polarizing as I am, as much as people say about me, I don’t really care what people think,” Hawkins said. “At end of the day, you can say whatever you want to say, but whenever they bring up poker, they’re going to need to bring up Maurice Hawkins. That’s what they’re going to need to do.”

Contact reporter David Schoen at dschoen@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5203. Follow him on Twitter: @DavidSchoenLVRJ