You don’t read something like this too often:

A 27-year-old Albert Lea man has qualified to play computer poker, in person, with tennis great Boris Becker, in the Bahamas, in January.

Do not adjust your bifocals. The sentence you have just read is true. So is this one:

If Keith Anderson beats Becker, a six-time Grand Slam singles champion, then he automatically enters a big-time poker tournament that otherwise costs $10,000 to enter.

How did this happen?

Anderson plays a lot of poker, in person and online.

He earned enough frequent player points at PokerStars.net that he entered the Battle for Boris, a qualifying tournament for the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure. He made the top 50 of an entry round, and then went to a final round. There were 980 players, and he had to make the top 9. He made that, too.

He then had to wait a month because there were six weeks of final rounds. Fifty-four players squared off on Nov. 16 and the top 3 would win the opportunity to play Becker.

Anderson said he didn’t seem to have any good hands that day but managed to win a few and lose a few and coast through the rest. When there were four players left, one had a lot of chips and Anderson and two other players had about the same. At that point, one of the two others went all in, the other one matched him; one player would win and one would lose. Anderson knew at that point he had slipped into the top 3. He had earned $2,000 and a trip to the Bahamas to play Becker.

“To be real honest, I didn’t even know who he was,” Anderson said.

The son of an architect, Becker is a 41-year-old German who now lives in Switzerland. He won the men’s single at Wimbledon at age 17, the youngest player ever to accomplish that feat. He has won Wimbledon three times, the Australian Open twice and the U.S. Open once – in the years from 1985 to 1996. Like how Andre Aggasi and Pete Sampras had a great rivalry, Becker’s rival was Swede Stefan Edberg. Tennis fans recall they dueled in three straight finals at Wimbledon.

That was then. Now Becker faces Anderson, who works in shipping and receiving at Rainbow Play Systems in Albert Lea.

“I plan on beating him, to be honest,” Anderson said Friday in an interview at the Tribune office.

He will be in the Bahamas at the Atlantis Paradise Island Hotel & Casino from Jan. 4 to 11. The room alone is worth $650 a night, not counting paid-for credits for food and drink.

If he loses, he gets to play in a less-important part of the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, or PCA, as they call it, but if he wins, he goes straight to the PCA Main Event, which has a $10,000 entry fee. He figures if he wins the Main Event, considering last year the winner took home $2 million, this year it would be worth about, oh, $2.9 million.

He plays Becker on Jan. 5. In fact, six people get to play Becker, but one at a time. Four of them are from North America. They each compete in what PokerStars is calling a “Battleship-style match.” That means Andersen and Becker will be sitting at the same table but playing poker on laptop computers – much like how a game of Battleship looks.

“Battleship poker gives you all the fast-play luxuries of online poker, but also allows you to look your opponent in the eye,” Becker said in a PokerStars news release. “It’s an exciting game to play and I’m really looking forward to competing against these players.”

Anderson grew up in Albert Lea, graduating from Albert Lea High School in 1999. He played golf and hockey and played cards sometimes with friends, nothing major. After finishing high school, he moved to Rochester for a year, then Minneapolis for a little more than four years.

While there, in 2001, he started playing cards at the tables at Canterbury Park Casino in Shakopee. He found he was good at poker and continues to play. He participates in local poker nights and goes to Diamond Jo Casino in Northwood, Iowa – you can see him there at a tournament Dec. 27 – and he still heads north to Canterbury Park Casino. He has played in the Fall Poker Classic and cashed – i.e. came out ahead – three out of four times. But mostly he plays online poker.

In fact, he said the week before winning the right to play Becker he had won $900 online in the PokerStars Poker Cash Tournament. His username was mentioned in PokerStars Two Plus Two Pokercast, sort of an online radio station for online poker players.

His friend Steve Groess of Albert Lea has played poker against Anderson online and in person. He said Anderson is better at online poker than table poker but nonetheless is good at both.

“He knows how to read people. He’s a pretty conservative player,” Groess said. “He does well in large tournaments.”

Groess said he thinks his friend will beat Becker.

“I think he’s got a good shot at it,” he said.