Poker Player - Antonio Esfandiari
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Antonio Esfandiari was born on the 8th December 1978 in Tehran, Iran his birth name was Amir Esfandiari, he currently resides in both Las Vegas, Nevada and San Francisco, California. Antonio was raised in Tehran until he was nine years old, he then moved to San Jose, California with his family. While attending school in California Antonio was often teased about his name so he changed his name to Anthony, he graduated from high school and then went on to college to study for one year that was until he saw a bartender from a restaurant do a magic trick this fascinated Antonio and before long he was practicing magic for hours at a time for two years straight. By the time he was nineteen, he was a professional magician and started to perform his magic skills at private parties, his client base was built up from doing tricks in the restaurant that he worked in and started handing out business cards to the customers, he also changed his name again to Antonio. A roommate first introduced Antonio into the game, he started to play cash games and within three months of playing he had managed to turn $900 into $20,000. The first tournament that Antonio entered he lost but he didn't get disheartened he started studying poker books and by the time he entered his second tournament he won, eventually Antonio began to realise that he was making more money from playing poker than performing magic tricks and decided to turn pro.
When the World Poker Tour began Antonio began travelling with the poker circuit, on one occasion Antonio found himself to be a poker celebrity when he knocked Phil Hellmuth out of the game during a televised game. Antonio had quickly began to pick up status and started to make a name for himself on the World Poker Tour scene. For such a short career span Antonio has a great number of poker achievements under his belt, in November 2002 he finished in 3rd place at the World Poker Tour Gold Rush $3,000 No-Limit Hold'em Championship Event in which he won $44,000. In January 2003 Antonio entered the World Poker Tour, Special Bad Boys Event and ended up finishing in 5th place, in February 2004 he made the final table of the World Poker Tour's LA Poker Classic $10,000 No-Limit Hold'em Championship, Commerce Casino tournament where he won close to $1.4 million as well as the $25,000 WPT Championship Seat, Antonio became the youngest player to ever win a million dollar prize at a televised WPT event. At the WPT Season 2, Invitational Antonio finished in 6th place winning $8,000, in May, 2004 at the World Series Of Poker $2,000 Pot-Limit Hold'em Event Antonio finished in 1st place winning $184,860 and a World Series Of Poker gold bracelet. In 2005 Antonio racked up a number of achievements including a 3rd place finish at the March NBC National Heads-Up Championship were he won $125,000, a 3rd place finish at the Third Annual Five Star World Poker Classic $5,000 No-Limit Hold'em Event in April with a win of $122,035, 3rd place finish at the May WSOP Circuit Event at Harrah's New Orleans in the $10,000 Main Event he won $221,445, at the WSOP $2,500 Short Handed No-Limit Hold'em Event he won $63,020 for finishing in 5th place and at the June WSOP, No-limit Hold'em Event in came in at 43rd still in the money winning $6,570.
Despite his poker career Antonio has never given up on his magic background and can often be seen doing magic tricks to entertain the crowd once he has been knocked off the table. Antonio's poker agent Poker Royalty provides the chance to hire Antonio for poker speaking or for personal appearances.
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