button in SafariDrees Finds Poker as "Comfort Zone" After Injury Rehab
Douglas Drees has played almost every event this week at Palace Poker, enjoying the return of the RunGood Poker Series to Texas. He also participated at the first series back in March, and has enjoyed a lot of success at the table since then.
The Western New York native grew up playing card games with his family, and has recently devoted more time branching out away from cash games after returning to the felt following a traumatic experience.
"I learned poker when I was a little kid," Drees told PokerNews on a break in the Day 1a action. "My great grandmother taught me poker concepts like we used to play when I would go to her house and she'd bring out the jar of coins and we'd just play fun games. I've been playing full-time since probably 2023, but really not tournaments. So this year is really when I started trying to play more tournaments."
"In 2025, I had a bad car accident and a traumatic brain injury, so I was out I was in bed for like three months, and then in rehab doing neuro stuff for another three months. It was like five days a week, five hours a day and seven different therapies."
His return to poker proved difficult, unable to focus and remember his cards. He began to regain his memory through therapy while also studying poker on his own time.
"I just watched a lot of poker content and everything that was studied was tournament study, tournament study, so I must have absorbed a lot of it. This year I started focusing on some tournaments and then I've done pretty well so far, you know. I think I've won seven live tournaments, 21 online, cashed a few, cashed a good one for like $44,000 in May. I think I absorbed something when I was just laying there. I'm not 100%, but I'm definitely to a point where I'm feeling confident again, you know, and poker is kind of like a comfort zone at this point."
Drees has enjoyed his RunGood experience thus far, indicating that he will keep coming back whenever the tour makes its way to North Texas.
"Everyone's really friendly. Everyone's great. You've got, you've got a team for everything, and it's like a cohesive team. You can see that you guys enjoy each other and you know cater to to us and make it easy. So I've really enjoyed it."