PokerStars Founder Claims a Victory: High Roller Title for Isai Scheinberg

To anyone with bare minimum of knowledge about online poker, the name of Isai Scheinberg rings a bell. It would be quite hard to miss the man who only founded the largest online poker room in the world – PokerStars. However, one thing we are not used to seeing is Isai’s name topping tournament leaderboards.

UKIPT made the stop in the home of PokerStars – the Isle of Man, and the founder and now former owner of the company seized this opportunity to play the game that, greatly thanks to him, is today enjoyed by millions across the globe.

Scheinberg put up £2,200 together with 14 others to compete in the UKIPT Isle of Man High Roller event and ended up claiming the first prize of £13,850. Although it was not a big event or particularly big sum of money, to have a tournament won by Isai Scheinberg of PokerStars is sometimes you don’t see every day. In fact it is just something you don’t see, period, at least until now.

On top of that, having won a tournament, former PS owner was, naturally, expected to sit down for the winner’s photo. If you’ve been somewhat more active member of the online poker community, you are probably aware of the mystique surrounding Isai’s picture, as no one has been able to find any recent photos of the man.

His most recent victory will not change much on this front, as although he did the winner’s photo, he did it surrounded by a bunch of people who all rushed to the table to be in the picture with the man whose contribution to growth of poker cannot be denied.

Some of them were players, others were PokerStars employees, people who must have reached and celebrated numerous milestones and big moments with the company, and now they wanted to be there for another such a moment.

We are unlikely to see Isai becoming a regular on the poker circuit, but perhaps now that he is not so preoccupied with the company so much he will have more time to travel and play – who knows? And being surrounded by poker for such a long time, we can only guess how much he was able to pick up. Maybe we will see a new star rising on the poker sky?

Romantic notions aside, it would be pretty cool to see Scheinberg take occasional seat in the nosebleeds games!

Pictures: PokerStars blog