Isaac Baron

One of many who started their path to poker greatness after the 2003 WSOP coverage, California born Isaac Baron discovered his passion for the game early in his life. Born in 1987, he was just a teen when he first saw poker being played on television. Although underage at the time, he started playing home games with his friends. What started off as a joke more than anything else will soon show to be one of the most important events in his life. As they were learning more about poker, their interest was growing as well, and one of them soon decided to test the waters online. Baron followed the example and opened an account with Poker Stars.

He says that during his early days of playing, one of the hardest parts of the game that he had to reconcile with was that folding wasn’t losing. Coming from the sports background he used to look at any form of competition in a simple way – you either win or you lose, there was no room for anything in between.

His online career mostly revolved around cash games, but tournaments results were not lacking either. Know by the alias “mr. menlo”, he managed to grab the victory in Sunday Million on Stars, $750k Guaranteed on Full Tilt, as well as the SCOOP title in the first mid-SCOOP event that was ever held – a $55 NLH 6-max rebuy, taking home $97,000 – and this is just a few of his biggest results.

Isaac Baron made quite an impact on the live tournament circuit as well. His first big score came in 2008, when he finished 4th in the EPT Monte Carlo Main Event, banking more than $930,000. 2009 saw him run away with the title and prize money of $247k from the Caesars Palace Classic Championship Event. Next year, he won another event during EPT Monte Carlo, making $408,000 in the process. The biggest score has come just recently, as he finished 3rd in the 2014 PCA Main Event, taking home $1.2 million for his efforts. To date, he has earned more than $3.8 million playing live tournaments.

In an interview from 2009, when asked about what he would be doing if he wasn’t playing poker, Isaac Baron said that he would probably still be in school, as he started studying journalism and, if he did go back, he would ideally do something in sports journalism or sports broadcasting. His advice to new players is to use the resources that are available everywhere these days and truly dedicate themselves to studying the game if they want to succeed. Sometimes things will not go your way from the start, but you should never be discouraged by that.