6,000 or so people have congregated at the Rio hotel in Las Vegas for this year’s World Series of Poker to fight for $50 million or so that will be split among the last 10% of players left standing. Among them are a number of tech startup entrepreneurs. We’re tracking four of them, plus any others that pop up.
This is David Sacks’ third WSOP. Sacks, a former PayPal exec and the CEO of Geni/Yammer, walked away with nothing two years ago. Last year he took home $25k in prize money, and twittered every hand. This year he’s way up after the first day, with $91k in chips. That likely puts him in the top 10% of players. He is twittering summaries of his play at @davidsacks. You can see his player card here with last year’s results.
Jason Calacanis (Mahalo founder) is playing today for the first time. He’s been sponsored by FullTiltPoker (they paid his $10k buy in) and looks absolutely ridiculous (he’s pictured above). Look for his twitters later this afternoon.
Facebook exec Chamath Palihapitiya is playing beginning today as well. And we’ve heard but haven’t verified that former Yahoo exec David Goldberg (currently CEO of SurveyMonkey) is at the WSOP too.
The tournament has just started so there isn’t much to report yet. One concern we have – Sacks is set to speak at our real time event this Friday, which is day three of the tournament. He told me today that if he makes it to day three he “has to play,” and won’t make the event. My response? It was NSFW.
Good luck to everyone. Except Sacks. I hope he loses it all on day 2.
I love TechCrunch so fucking much.
me too.
You’re my favorite blogger of all time. The techcrunch bylines are pretty small so I usually don’t see who writes the articles until I notice the arrington-cynicism – but really: I too love techcrunch so much!
If it wasn’t for those people not necessarily needing funding any more I’d say that poker is the new VC ;-)
wow!
You should edit this post Michael, and include the actual image of Jason in the article rather than the link. It will drive him nuts: he looks ridiculous.
yeah i agree. will add it to the bottom of the post.
ok, put it front and center at top :-)
Awesome. I just influenced the most influential man in Tech. I am now the most influential man in tech as a result.
We wait to do your bidding
how much for an autograph, Mark?
I just bought the domain MarkCrunch.com. I’ll give it to you for $90 K, or you can have it for free if we can split ownership as MarkCrunch.com begins its slow, deliberate, planetary takeover.
:’-D
You are the best!
Jason’s look is awesome. Can certainly compete with those poker guys on TV. I hope he plays as tough as he looks.
Yeah… his look is just begging me to take his lunch money.
All Jason needs is a pair of those silly “animal eye” sunglasses to complete the look.
Looks like phil hellmuth…
What is wrong with a tribute to the band Cheap Trick? They are a great band! So I say rock on Mr. Calacanis. :D
Dang. Missed it by a week.
The poker world is filled with ex tech guys.
Some other notables are Phil Gordon who’s actually part of Team Full Tilt. Phil was the first employee of NetSys Technologies which was eventually acquired by Cisco which made him a millionaire. Phil now plays poker full time and also hosts many world wide tv poker events including ESPN’s coverage of the WSOP online. http://en.wikip...iki/Phil_Gordon
Another is Richard Brodie (known online as “Quiet Lion” who was employee #77 for Microsoft and actually was the original author of Microsoft Word. He also is a regular around the world at top poker events. http://en.wikip...Richard_Brodie_(programmer)
Paul Phillips (known as dot-com) also is now a professional poker player, but back in his tech years wrote the Boa web server. In 1996 he started Go2Net which netted him millions and allowed him to play poker professionally. http://en.wikip.../Paul_Phillips_(poker_player)
Barry Greenstein (know as the Robin Hood of Poker) also got his money from the tech world while working for Symantec back in the 80’s and 90’s before retiring and playing poker professionally. Barry’s known for giving all his tournament winnings (almost $7 million) to children’s charities. He’s also considered one of the best cash game players in the world and is a regular at “The Big Game” at the Bellagio. http://en.wikip...arry_Greenstein
These are just a few examples, but the poker world is full of ex tech guys. Most studied mathematics and were coders of some sort before making millions and turning to the world of professional poker. Most are also world class backgammon players.
Just a few interesting notes I’d thought I’d add to the article. All these guys are also playing in the month long World Series of Poker.
I like Jason Calacanis. He’s quirky and I don’t know how to take this article.
Regardless, any publicity is good publicity I suppose.
Apparently Jason Calacanis is a little testy when it comes to his poker playing abilities. He called me a douche in a Twitter direct message.
http://jsnyng.com/?p=400
it is absolutely obvious from that message that he was joking, bantering with you. to take that and try to get attention for it is inexcusable.
It is a sin of the highest caliber that will haunt Jason Young for the rest of his natural life.
I think we all know that Jason was kidding with his comments, and that I was using his comments to shamefully plug my own website. It’s a new site, and I was trying to drive traffic to it. Apologies to Mr. Calacanis. Good luck in the WSOP and congrats on making it to Day 2.
dude you ARE a douche
Poker on tv is just so stupid. They look ridiculous in sunglasses and hats. If they were any good, they wouldn’t need it but no, they suck so they have to hide everything behind props to make themselves look cool when they have no idea what they are doing.
Sandra,
You really need to get a clue. Plenty of professional players that have won 10’s of millions of dollars regularly wear hats and sunglasses at the table.
Actually Robert – if you pay attention to some of the absolute best players they think it’s a joke too. A few have even gone as far as suggesting things like sunglasses shouldn’t be allowed.
Phil Helmuth (always wears “face protection”)
Chino Rheem (always)
Johnny Chan (sometimes)
Chris Ferguson (sometimes)
Chris Moneymaker (always)
Chip Reese (sometimes)
On and on…
Jason Calcanis couldn’t afford his own $10K buy-in? Man, I didn’t know Mahalo was doing *that* badly.
Yes, getting a company to pay you to play in an event that normally costs $10k to enter is surely a sign of incompetency…..
Mike you are the best! :D
LOL… Calacanis is the biggest blowhard on the internet. Mahalo is going to leave a crater bigger than grand canyon once it finally implodes!
Calacanis is a good guy, mahalo is doing fine and I believe he’s giving at least part of any winnings to charity.
Mike,
Mahalo’s traffic has been dropping steadily.
same with his chip stack…wah wah wah.
I was waiting for The Penguin to show up here. Mahalo’s traffic hasn’t been dropping. According to Quantcast, it’s actually spiking.
http://www.quan....com/mahalo.com
Ken Moss of Crowdeye
http://news.cne...0267393-56.html
You have a speaker who isn’t sure that speaking at your event is his top priority? Why not kick him off the agenda and get someone you can count on?
So they want to play poker? What’s the big fucking deal? How is too competitive and why do you think he looks ridiculous?
Love TC, but the “ridiculous” comment is ridiculous. It’s no different than your site being littered by ads all along the right side. FullTilt is putting up $10K for his buy-in because he’s gonna get TV coverage, player bio time, etc. Tech “douches” like us, just might put our iPhones, Pre’s, and Android’s down for 5 minutes, turn on ESPN, see this guy on TV, relate to him, and start playing poker…perhaps at FullTilt. The online poker industry is in a heated battle with the government and the more high-profile upstanding citizens that are seen playing the game just might help someone in Washington pull their head out of their ass.
calm down. i’m just making fun of my friend.
There’s a lot of beginners luck in poker – cos they don’t know what they’re supposed to do… so Jason might have a chance! (the “beginners”at our games always win but we get them in the end!).
Hey Mike, how about covering some more poker sites, starting with PokerDIY, a social network for connecting poker players with league managment? ;)
Or more importantly the tech behind poker sites like Full Tilt, Party Poker, Poker Stars etc… And specifically the security behind them or in some instances the lack thereof.
It’s a $12 Billion business and over the years there’s been a number of security breaches, ex employees hacking sites and using “Super User” accounts (Absolute Poker) and plenty of other high profile scandals. That’s what happens when there’s little to no oversight and ends up underground.
It’s a huge tech business that deserves a little coverage especially during WSOP time.
the only way to be competitiv:
http://816f8cx6...t/?tid=95DQ2MV7
LOL: poker pro ))))