Barry Greenstein - Barryg1

In a game that has long been thought of as one of crooks and cheats, there is one man who has earned the well deserved nickname “The Robin Hood of Poker.”

Not long after he was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1954, Greenstein learned to play a variety of card games with his parents. While he showed a natural talent in all the games they played, his poker skill was exceptional. Even though he was in his early teens, Barry was already making over $200 a week playing in neighborhood home games. While this would drive most kids to an early gambling career, Greenstein was not content with just making money. He also wanted to make a difference.

When Greenstein was creating his own computer software at age 15, he was also entertaining hopes of becoming a doctor. After graduating high school, he started college at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In just 3 years Barry found himself with a degree in computer science, and a growing bankroll, which he earned playing poker at nights after class was done. Again, unsatisfied with where he was, he enrolled himself in the mathematics Ph.D. program and started working toward his doctorate, all the while building his roll.

After meeting marrying a woman with three kids, Barry hoped to gain custody of the children. Since it was practically impossible for him to be awarded custody of the kids as a student and professional gambler, Greenstein packed up the family and moved everyone to the Silicon Valley where he took a job with a few others creating a start-up software company called Symantec. After the children were officially Barry’s and his new wife’s he found a poker room and reignited his love affair with what would later become his life’s calling.

While he was happy spending his days creating what the software industry considered one of the greatest developments of that time (the Q&A) and his nights playing No Limit Hold ‘em at the Cameo Club in California, a family disaster forced Greenstein to again seek a new path. When his daughter was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in the late 1980s, Barry decided that since he made more money playing poker than at Symantec, rather than quitting his job, he would just step up the hours at work and at the poker table.

In 1990, he finally made the jump to full time professional poker. Spending 12 hours a day at the poker table, Greenstein made easy work the Palo Alto cash games. Even though he also entered and fared well in quite a few tournaments as well, Barry didn’t find the monumental tournament success he enjoys today until 2003, when he won $1,000,000 in Larry Flynt’s Million Dollar Seven Card Stud challenge.

Since then, Barry has donated nearly all $6,600,000 in tourney winnings to charity, including his favorite, Children’s Inc. In keeping with the “stealing from the rich, giving to the poor” tradition, the donations are the inspiration behind the title “Robin Hood of Poker.” In addition to his 3 World Series of Poker bracelets and 9 other tournament wins, Greenstein has been noted by other “Big Game” players as one of the biggest cash game winners in the last decade.