Danielle Andersen was $13 Away From Never Playing Poker Again!!!

To anyone who picked up the documentary Bet, Raise, Fold when it came out, Danielle Anderson is a name that should ring a few bells. The movie told several tales of the rise of online poker and its dark days after the Department of Justice went all Elliot Ness and kicked down the doors at Full Tilt Poker, pretty much nixing the whole enterprise of online poker in the States. Anderson was one of the main players in the movie.

After shipping out from her childhood home to uni, she then shipped out again to join her boyfriend (now husband) Kory at Illinois State. This was back around 2003, and as we all remember fondly, around that time “Chris Moneymaker had won the World Series, and that got a lot of young men interested in poker.”

Lured away from her studies to student bedsits filled with the sound of riffling of plastic chips and paper cards, she found she had a knack for sussing out bluffs and putting opponents to a decision.

To The Net

Kory pushed her to take her talent international and sign up for an online account. A wire transfer of $50 and few basic AML checks later and she was playing against the world. She didn’t do too well at first.

Having decided to quit if her initial stake didn’t stick, she was down as low as $13 before her fortunes rallied:

“I was $13 from never playing poker again,” she said. “We decided that if I could make $100 a week with online poker, it would really help our financial situation.”

She played for a long time at Full Tilt, even wearing their patch for a while. But then Black Friday came and with most of her bankroll tied up in the ensuing seizure of assets, she had to switch full time to playing live. She and her husband Kory live in Las Vegas, so there are worse places for it.

Post 15/02/2011

She seems to have made a good recovery, getting back her bankroll when PokerStars stepped in to mop up FTP’s business, and with the small exception of strange working hours, Anderson’s life as a poker pro is rather domestic.

“It’s very normal, except that my job is playing poker. I’m almost always home for Easton [her son] after school,” she says laughing, then adding, “Unless I wind up at a table where someone is really throwing his chips around.”

She also makes the odd appearance on shows like Poker Night in America and Jason Somerville’s podcast and this year took 402nd in the Main Event at this year’s WSOP for around $30,000. 

It’s a long way to have come from being $13 dollars from of quitting.