Derek "Derk" Williams is a 28 year old professional poker player originally from Louisville, Kentucky now residing in Las Vegas. While a Ph.D. candidate and instructor at the University of Louisville one of his students introduced him to poker in late 2005 at Caesars Indiana (now Harrah's Horseshoe Southern Indiana). He started playing online shortly thereafter and by 2007 had quit academia to be a professional poker player.

Derk has played several games seriously, including full ring limit, full ring no limit, shorthanded no limit, and sit-and-gos. He currently plays on Full Tilt Poker under the name PokerDerk529 where he can be found playing mid-to-high stakes sit-and-gos. He won the high stakes sit-and-go leader board in May 2009 and has earned over $100k in just 4 months of play this year.

In 1999 Derk was the United States Academic Decathlon national mathematics champion. He earned bachelors and masters degrees with highest honors in computer engineering and computer science. He has spent time as a researcher at the University of Waterloo's Centre for Applied Cryptographic Research and also programmed computers for the U.S. Navy. As a graduate student he taught courses on everything from calculus to C programming to design of operating systems.

With a background in, and love for, teaching and tutoring, Derk brings to PokerVT the ability to break down difficult theoretical concepts in sit-and-gos and will show you how to apply them during play. By watching his videos you'll master how to play at all stages of any type of sit-and-go, what observations you should be making about your opponents and how to adjust your play accordingly, what software is useful for improving your game, what you can expect to make playing different types of sit-and-gos online, and learn independent chip modeling — a way to mathematically analyze how correct some plays in sit-and-gos and multi-table tournaments are — in detail.

Derk is part of the Bad Beats Crew, along with fellow PokerVT pro Jason "JCarver" Somerville, and his blog can be found at http://derk.badbeatscrew.com/