Meet Henry Orenstein

(Photo: Newsweek.com)

Henry Orenstein won a WSOP gold bracelet in Seven Card Stud and also finished 8th and 12th in the WSOP Main Event, but those are the least of his accomplishments.

Born in in 1923 in Hrubieszów, Poland, it was with determination, wit, and a bit of luck that Orenstein was able to survive five concentration camps during the Holocaust in the 1940s that killed approximately six million Jews. He eventually realized his dream and found his way to America along with two brothers, albeit without his parents and two other siblings who were murdered.

(Photo: Newsweek.com)

Toymaker Extraordinaire

A prolific inventor, Orenstein spent much of the ensuing years as a toymaker, creating a number of toys and dolls that reflected his ingenuity and imagination. He made millions of dollars beginning in the late 1950s, first with a doll called Betty the Beautiful Bride, and later with Betty's bridesmaids. A toy gun in the early 1960s was another big seller, as were his Johnny Lightning racing cars that competed with Hot Wheels, and his Dawn dolls that went head-to-head against Barbie, claims Newsweek.

All told, Orenstein is credited with over 100 patents, his endless supply of toys landing in the hands of children everywhere. The most successful of those was the popular Transformers, which hit the market in 1984 after Orenstein convinced both Hasbro and the Japanese toy company Takara that a toy that can metamorphose into yet another toy would be a big hit.

Orenstein was 100% correct, as Transformers has spawned an industry all its own with books, comics, TV series', movies, and video games.

While nobody would fault Orenstein for slowing down a bit at this point after achieving such great success, he was nowhere near finished with transforming the lives of others with his ideas and creations. His greatest invention was yet to come.

(Photo: Newsweek.com)

Hello Poker

Orenstein didn't begin playing poker until he was in his 60s, but as with almost every other aspect of his life, he succeeded. A title at the 1996 WSOP earned him a payday of $130,000, chump change for a man of his wealth.

But more important to the world of poker was what occurred a couple years prior to that victory when Orenstein turned on his television to watch the WSOP and found himself bored with the action because he couldn't see the players' hole cards. His creative mind was once again stimulated, resulting in his devising a table with glass panels and cameras underneath that allowed viewers at home to have information that made the game more exciting and fun to watch.

Orenstein patented his poker table in 1995, but others, including players, didn't yet share his vision of how great this invention was. It wasn't until 2002 when he convinced an executive at NBC Sports to make a go of it that the hole card camera was used while filming High Stakes Poker and Poker Superstars.

(Photo: Newsweek.com)

Chris Moneymaker's improbable victory at the 2003 WSOP Main Event coupled with Orenstein's hole card camera caused poker's popularity to skyrocket. The rest, as they say, is history, including Orenstein's induction into the Poker Hall of Fame in 2008.