November 9 – Ylon Schwartz

Ylon Schwartz is the prototypical gamer. He’s played them all practically and in most cases, it was for money. At the ripe old age of 13, he was introduced to the game of Chess. This was a very popular game where he spent his younger years, right in the heart of Manhattan, New York at Washington Square Park. He quickly took to the game and thanks to a few lessons from a mentor that he shared his early profits with, he was beating some of the best in the area. He went to play professionally before tiring of the game, and then he found poker.

Hindsight being 20/20, it’s pretty clear that poker has been a more profitable venue for Schwartz than Chess. With career winnings topping one million dollars (including the minimum ninth place money of over 900K from the WSOP final table), he’s made quite a splash so far.

He’s well known online as one of the best Multi Table Tournament (MTT) players in the world. He’s run deep in the PokerStars Sunday Million too many times to count as well as the Sunday Second Chance tournaments. He says that he tries to stay away from cash games due to the variance.

When he’s not playing poker he’s a very “earthy” type, to say the least. He enjoys Yoga and meditation and says that if he wins the World Series of Poker, he’s going to disappear somewhere for a long time and drink a lot of fine liquor. He’s even been quoted as saying that if he cashes big in the event, he will likely disappear for a long time in Guatemala or Brazil, anywhere so far as he’s out of the limelight. Up to this point, he’s made an effort to stay out of the press as much as possible for such a high profile poker player playing the largest event in the world.