Barry Greenstein
Barry Greenstein is the type of person you would expect to be a poker player. He has the ideal background – his dad loved playing poker, and he had his start at the young age of twelve. He is also a math whiz, having a bachelor degree in Computer Science and 
then completing his dissertation to try and earn a PhD in mathematics. He did not get his doctorate degree, however, as he did not defend this dissertation that he created. What he did instead was to start playing poker. He stopped playing when he wanted to adopt, and so he worked for Symantec, a large and popular security software company, and stopped working in 1991, after the adoptions, to pursue playing poker professionally.
Greenstein is a staple at the World Series of Poker and at the World Poker Tour, and since he began playing professionally in 1991, he has won three WSOP bracelets, has been to thirteen final tables, and he has won $1,358,562 from the WSOP alone. In the WPT, he has won a total of $1,746,008, with his biggest win taking place in 2004, when he won the first prize at the WPT World Poker Open. His combined winnings amount to $3,104,570, just from the WPT and the WSOP, and from 2004 to 2008 he has had six first-place wins in these events. This amount is almost a half of his total winnings so far. In the present day, his total winnings from all the poker tournaments he has ever joined goes over $6.9 million.
Aside from playing poker, Greenstein is also the founder of PokerRoad, a website dedicated to poker strategies and entertainment. This is his project with his stepson who is also a professional poker player, Joe Sebok. He also wrote a book on poker strategies, Ace on the River, which he gives away for free to players that beat him on the poker tables.