Maths Prodigy Frankenberger Wins WSOP $1,500 No Limit Event
June 19, 2011 8:40 amUS player Andrew Frankenberger has just won WSOP Event #28: $1,500 No Limit Hold’em, after overcoming a field of 2,500 players over three days to win a WSOP bracelet, and collect the $599,153 first place prize.
Amazingly, last year the former BNP Paribas equity derivatives trader started his new found career in poker after leaving his high-paying job to search for new challenges.
Having previously only played in the occasional home cash game, Andrew Frankenberger immediately took to his new found profession and in his first year of competing made $1,210,181 in profits. This included taking down the $5k WPT Legends of Poker Main Event for $750,000, as well as victory at the $2k Venetian Deepstack for $162,110.
2011, too, has started well for Frankenberger who can now add a WSOP title to to his expanding poker resume, and boast an impressive $1,819,584 in live tournament earnings over a mere year and a half of professional competition.
One of the secrets to the 38 year-old New Yorker’s poker success could be linked to his extraordinary grasp of mathematics and numbers. Some of Andrew’s party tricks, for instance, involve memorising 10-digit random string of numbers, reciting them backwards, and dividing them by another digit. Whats more, he can even recall the string of numbers several days later.
Consequently, Andrew Frankenberger says he can take advantage of poker opponents by remembering how they played certain hands 20 rounds ago and adjusting his tactics accordingly. He also ensures he throws off his competitors by betting with a consistently inconsistent style.
As WSOP legend Phil Hellmuth said of Frankenberger; “Someone from Wall Street with that kind of background is set up to naturally do well in poker. The derivative trader can apply his stock valuation skills. Maybe those skills allowed him to see things at the table that other didn’t.”
There would now seem to be few maybes about it after Frankenberger eventually reached the heads-up phase of the 2011 WSOP $1,500 No Limit Hold’em Event and defeated Josh Evans after a couple of hours of play. Commenting later on his remarkable WSOP triumph, Frankenberger said:
“For me this win is just so important because when I won Legends, when I won Venetian, poker was very new to me. I hadn’t invested that much into it in terms of time and energy, and at this point I’ve been playing all year and traveling all year. This is my first big win of 2011, I can’t tell you how much this one means to me right now.”