Never meet your heroes they say, you’re bound to be disappointed.
However, for 20-year-old Cody Peacock the exact opposite was true. Last week, Peacock made the hour-long drive from his home in Jupiter, Florida to Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, Florida specifically to meet WPT ambassador Brad Owen and what took place was the furthest thing from disappointment a Meet-Up Game could offer.
Peacock says he’s been watching Owen’s vlogs for a solid two years and ultimately, Owen’s videos are what got him started playing the game.
“I’d always known about poker but I never really played it. My dad, as I was growing up, he was always a dealer. Once I started watching Brad’s videos, it got me and all my friends into playing [the game of poker],” Peacock said. “We all started playing home games and once we got old enough, we started going to the casinos like Palm Beach Kennel Club and the Hard Rock.”
“But I always watched Brad and it was just super entertaining. I feel like he’s not like everyone else in the poker world and I watch his vlogs mostly for the humor, not just the poker.”
Peacock is normally a $1/$2 player, a recreational for sure. He made the trip just to have the chance to say hello, not prepared (or bankrolled) to play in the standard $2/$5 games that the Meet-Up Game runs. But when he finally had the chance to meet Owen, the two had a spontaneous exchange that more than made Peacock’s day.
“Brad’s a huge name in the poker industry, but I’m not really a celebrity fanboy or anything like that. But for someone like that who’s a real person, it was really cool to meet him. I went up to him and I was like, ‘I don’t need a picture or anything like that. Just wanted to say thank you and think you’re an awesome dude.”
“Then he went on to ask me if I was going to play in the game with him. I told him I didn’t really have enough money to play in that game, so he said he would buy me in. He went out of his way to make sure I got put in on a table that he hadn’t been to yet when they tried to seat me at a different table. He really did everything he could to make sure I could play and just asked me about myself and everything is… Like a normal conversation. Any other person.”
Owen essentially staked Peacock who took a seat in the $2/$5 game, only the second time he’d ever played those stakes. If you ask him, he’ll tell you about how on the very first hand he doubled his stack holding pocket queens which improved to a full house. Peacock went on to not only meet Owen, but to play with him, and even share in a personal poker milestone with him.
“It was great. I ended up booking my biggest score. So I gave Brad back his $300 because I was up and because, obviously, it was his money and I was winning so I wasn’t going to keep his money.”
“I don’t know, it felt so normal,” Peacock said. “He was just any other normal guy. Everyone was saying they thought we were brothers or everyone thought I knew him just because of how we were talking and everything. But he was a super nice guy and everything worked out great. It really couldn’t have been any better.”