VANCOUVER -- An Ottawa graduate student climbed out from under his $30,000 debt Sunday in a novel way: he won $1 million US in a poker tournament in the Bahamas.

Quillan Nagel, 30, is actually scheduled to defend his master's thesis next week at Carleton University's Norman Patterson School of International Affairs. Although the head-space transition from casino to academic hot-seat may sound challenging, Nagel probably has the demeanour to handle it. After winning the 16-hour tournament, Nagel turned down the prize package option that included an Aston Martin DB9, opting for more cash. Using up six-figures worth of equity on a car was out of the question -- and besides, the Glebe resident wanted to buy a Toyota Prius hybrid instead.

Nagel became one of 27 players to earn entry to the tournament, qualifying from a field of 800,000 people playing poker on-line. He went to the tournament with his wife, Lisa. Their three-month-old daughter, Audrey, is in Toronto with Nagel's mother-in-law (the trip had been booked since August, and Nagel was guaranteed to win a minimum of $5,000).

Making the man an even more interesting character he is a former professional ballet dancer with the Washington and Cincinnati ballets before having to retire because of injuries. Born in Victoria, he went to Toronto at age nine to study ballet in Toronto.

And Sunday, just after 3 a.m., after outbluffing a Florida man who seemed to be able to fool everybody else, he became a Texas Holdem champion.

While the game was high-stakes, the scene wasn't the smoke-filled room full of hardened professionals steadying their nerves with a shot of whiskey. The tournament area was a strictly no-smoking zone and Nagel, like many of his competitors, was drinking water and just a little bit of coffee.

His opponent in the finals, Jerry Watterson, was the president of the student body at a Florida university. The fourth-place finisher, Steve Bazzo, was a 21-year-old who made sandwiches at a Subway franchise in Michigan. According to the tournament web site, he plans to use his $118,000 winnings to move to Las Vegas with friends and become a professional. His mom supports the idea.

And then there is Nagel, the graduate student, whose thesis -- which he plans to defend on schedule -- is about U.S.-Iranian relations.

In an interview last night from the Atlantis Paradise Resort and Casino, he told the Citizen that international relations has something of the high-stakes poker game about it. But his ballet training might have done more to prepare him for competitive poker, especially in terms of focus and dealing with the unexpected.

"You've got a girl above your head and you're walking and you're the only people on stage and something goes awry. I mean, what do you do? You have to be able to make very quick and proper decisions -- and poker is all a game of decisions. Whoever makes the best decisions and the least mistakes usually wins."

While it's not the case that he expected to win the tournament, he said he really didn't think about things in those terms.
By Zev Singer and Paula McCooey