Photo courtesy of Bluff Magazine	Born :	December 30, 1954 in Chicago, Illionois
	Residence :	Rancho Palos Verdes, CA
	Nick Name:	"The Robin Hood of Poker"
	Career Highlights:	Barry is considered by his peers to be one of the top 5 cash game players and is a regular at the highest stakes games in Vegas.

Barry Greenstein Facts:

• Donates all tournament winnings to charity.
• In March of 2003 Barry donated $1,000 to each of the 440 coordinators of Children, Inc, a non-profit organization that helps provide food, clothing, and education for children living in poverty.
• One of Barry's sons is professional poker player Joe Sebok.
• Barry taught Mimi Tran how to play poker in return for lessons on how to speak Vietnamese.

Bio

If you asked the average professional poker player why he or she plays, you would probably hear “for money” as the most common answer. Barry however plays for charity. Almost four million dollars worth of charity in the past several years to be precise. Nicknamed the “Robin Hood of Poker”, Barry Greenstein stands in stark contrast to most other poker players. Every penny that Barry wins in tournament play goes towards charity, the bulk of which is devoted to children’s causes.

Before he was the Robin Hood of poker, Barry was working towards a mathematics Ph D. at the University of Illinois while working at Symantec. Symantec was a very small software company that is now known for it’s Norton Anti-Virus software. At the time he joined their workforce there were only 5 employees. When he retired in 1991 there were over a thousand. The company’s success was do in no small part to the work Barry put into the database and word processing program Q&A.

Once his work at Symantec was done, Barry returned to playing poker full time in order to support his ailing wife. Poker provided him the only opportunity to make enough money to pay for her treatment while also giving him the flexible schedule he needed in order to care for her. He became a regular at Larry Flynt’s $1,500 - $3,000 stud game and was often playing in the highest stakes games in Vegas. Barry is considered by his peers to be one of the, if not the, most successful players in these high stakes cash games.

In February 2003 Larry Flynt convinced Barry to play in his Hustler Casino’s $125,000 buy in 7 card stud championship. Barry won the event after getting heads up with Larry Flynt and donated almost all of the winnings to charity. Throughout 2003 Barry played in close to 30 tournament events, always donating his winnings to charity. Then in 2004 he finished first in the 2004 Jack Binion’s World Poker Open with a first place prize of 1.2 million dollars. Later that year he won a little under $200,000 at the Party Poker Million 3. Barry also won his first WSOP bracelet that year when he won the no limit deuce to seven draw event. In 2005 Barry won his second bracelet in as many years when he finished first in the $1,500 Pot Limit Omaha event.

Despite Barry’s rise to poker celebrity status, he still remains humble and soft spoken. Most of his interviews focus around his charitable causes and we would be remiss if we didn’t list a few of them here.

Children, Incorporated

Bogan Technical High School

Guyana Watch

Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford

Peninsula Education Foundation

iLoveSchools.com

March of Dimes