While incarcerated in a UK prison, German tennis legend Boris Becker got into a poker game with some nasty people and ended up owing money to ruthless criminals who made his life miserable.

Becker's new memoir, Inside, which describes the agony of his eight-month incarceration as part of a two-and-a-half-year sentence for bankruptcy charges, contains the disclosure.

He was discovered to have hidden loans and assets in 2022 that he ought to have told the authorities about after going bankrupt in 2017.

"Boiled" mind

Becker talked candidly about his time in the can during a book promotion interview with German publication SZ-Magazin this week.  Prison "eats away at your soul and boils your mind," according to the former PokerStars brand ambassador.

According to SZ-Magazin, Becker's cell had a metal toilet without a seat and a narrow cot with a plastic mattress.  The nighttime screams, however, were the most painful for him; Becker described it as "as if people were screaming for their lives."  "It continued all night."

"By October, I was sleeping in my tracksuit and socks,” he added. “Some nights it was so cold in my cell that I slept in two jackets and two pairs of socks, wrapping a towel around my head. I lost seven kilos in the first four weeks.”

Becker played poker, a game that was dear to his heart, as a way to kill time and relieve the psychological strain of his confinement.

He worked as a television pundit, coached tennis, and played poker semi-professionally after retiring in 1999.  He was a frequent player on the European Poker Tour circuit and represented PokerStars from 2007 to 2014.

According to Becker, this was a "foolish" idea. He talks about a game he played with a group of Romanian convicts that went on for several days.  After everything was said and done, the former three-time Wimbledon champion lost to the Romanians by £500.

Rescued by a Friend

For a man who was formerly worth millions of dollars, that might not sound like much, but in prison, it's a lot of money.

“I had played poker professionally after tennis, so I thought, what could go wrong? But I was playing with real criminals, who came into my cell and threatened me if I didn’t pay.”

Becker had to plead with an outside acquaintance to send money to settle the debt.  He believes that he would be a "different person today" if his friend hadn't assisted him.

“You’ll never completely shake that time,” he said. “You’ll take prison with you into your new life. I can only fall asleep if the bedroom door is completely closed.”