From teaching high school to winning WSOP bracelets, Ken Aldridge has seen it all.

Ken “Teach” Aldridge lived every poker player’s dream Friday night when he took down Event #9 ($1,500 Six-max No Limit Hold’em) to earn $428,259 and his very first WSOP bracelet. The former high school was very excited following his win.

So this is your first bracelet correct?

Oh yes, definitely yes.

How many tournaments have you played in so far and not won a bracelet?

Of the tournaments that you could win a bracelet in, I guess this makes maybe seven.

How do you feel now?

Oh it’s great. How many guys or ladies wouldn’t love to be in my position? It’s wonderful it really is.

When you sat down three days ago did you think you would make it this far?

Well yeah, I think I’m a pretty good tournament player. I’ve done well in the tournaments I’ve played in so far, so I certainly didn’t think that I couldn’t win it. I kept right at it. Plus I had some guys here that believed in me, they really pushed me though this.

This was a grueling heads up battle, at any point did you think it might not be worth it?

Oh no, as tired as I am and everthing, no, adreneline kept pushing it really did.

Did you ever get to a point where you thought maybe you would gamble with a hand?

No no no, I knew not to. All through the tournament I didn’t take any risk. I made a bad push here and a bad call here and I think I might have made one small mistake up to this point. But other than that I didn’t make really any mistakes. I didn’t put myself at risk at all. And I almost never, very seldom was I all in.

This is a short handed tournament. Did you have a lot of short handed experience coming into this?

No, I’ve never played short handed before. Unless I was down to a final table in a small tournament somewhere.

You spent 29 years teaching high school, how did you go from that to being a poker player?

A friend of mine invited me on a party poker cruise where he had won a seat. I went with him and played in a couple of home games before I went. I didn’t really know what I was doing but I had alot of fun. All the pros wanted to play with me because I didn’t know what I was doing. So I lost a lot of money in the beginning. But at the end I got lucky and got most of my money back. Its only been the last couple of years that I actually caught onto the game to where I feel pretty good. To where I felt pretty confident.

Now that you won, are going to play any more at the WSOP?

I’m sure I’ll come back to play in the big one.

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