News / Chris Edwards / 28 July 2008 / Leave a comment

Ylon Schwartz is 38 years old and hails from Brooklyn, New York. He is a self described Professional gambler and has spent most of his adult life in casinos. He returns to the cloth with a chip stack of 12,525,000.

He began a career of gambling at the age of 13 hustling the legendary chess games in Manhattan's Washington Square Park. He soon became a professional chess player but realised he needed to expand his trade if he wanted to make more money. He started playing more pool, darts, backgammon and even sports betting before being introduced to the game of poker. He made regular trips to Atlantic city and Foxwoods and soon gained a local reputation.

Asked how his experience as a professional chess player has assisted him as a poker player, he gives its main advantages as helping with concentration and patience. It has also helped him get used to confrontational situations and reading his opponents.

Schwartz has 11 WSOP cashes under his belt, the largest being in the 2006 $2,500 NLHE event where his 17th place was worth $28,187. He has won over $250,000 in lifetime tournament earnings with his biggest being 2005 Mashantucket World Poker Open $500 event where he came 3rd for $49,960. Although he has cashed in a lot of tournaments, he is prone to Matusow style blowups when he gets deep in an event.

Coming into the final day, he says that he knew he had to focus and spent time relaxing and swimming to prepare. He also had a strategy to play lots of small pots as apposed to large ones to slowly increase his chip stack to help avoid elimination.

He was involved in a couple of big pots preflop where he ended up folding to large reraises, but did eliminate 14th place finisher Gert Andersen. Schwartz opened the pot to 500,000 and Andersen moved all in for 3.8m. Scwartz instantly called and showed Ad Kd which was in great shape against Andersons As Js. The flop was interesting, Qs 10c 2h meaning a K was no good for Scwartz anymore, but neither player improved on the turn and river and Scwartz dragged in an almost 8m chip pot.

Asked what his plans are for his winnings (or the 'cheese' as he likes to call money) he replied 'My friends need money'.