Andy Frankenberger

At 38 years of age, former Wall Street equity derivatives trader Andrew Frankenberger is one of poker’s rising stars. In the past year and a half of playing some of poker’s highest buy-in events, the New Yorker recorded a World Poker Tour win in 2010 and just this summer won his first World Series of Poker bracelet.

Two-thirds of the way to poker’s version of a Triple Crown (a victory on the European Poker Tour rounding out the list), Frankenberger has turned his experience evaluating risk and reward in the financial markets into nearly $2 million in poker tournament profits — and he is still learning.

Despite the rush of success, Frankenberger, true to the trader in him, was prepared to consider a change at the end of 2011 if he played the entire year as a professional and failed to turn a profit. It had been just months earlier when he was crowned World Poker Tour Player of the Year, but the Duke graduate was determined to keep winning. He did so in a big way at the 2011 World Series of Poker, and it looks like the poker world won’t see him going anywhere anytime soon.

Success From The Beginning

His road to financial freedom began after an internship on Wall Street following his sophomore year of college.

“I just loved the atmosphere. I knew that I wanted to go into finance on Wall Street. I didn’t know what that meant at the time, but I knew that was where I wanted to be. I have always been a numbers guy and a lover of games such as chess and backgammon.”

The following summer, he had an internship at J.P. Morgan. He knew then that he wanted to go into sales and trading.

“I bet if a lot of these poker players ever sat at a trading desk, they would want to do it, too. It is such a similar type of mindset.”

With the fast-paced environment on Wall Street, Frankenberger experienced the typical stress that accompanied the job. However, it wasn’t long before the young college grad used that pressure as fuel for a successful career.

“I dealt with a guy who would scream at me and slam his desk, even before telling me how to do something. He would sit there and use a phone to bang on the keyboard, causing keys to fly off. I took it and took it, and then, once, I fought back. I said, ‘You have to explain it to me, and if you don’t, I am never going to get better.’ Until you show that you are willing to fight back, you will continue to get berated.”

Frankenberger eventually would climb the corporate ranks of Wall Street and run an equity derivatives trading desk. Constantly multitasking throughout the day, with deadlines as short as 60 seconds, Frankenberger proved formidable in his position.

“If a customer comes in with stock XYZ, and I’ve never even heard of it, I’ve got effectively one minute to look up the stock, figure out what they do, and figure out which upcoming events I need to be afraid of. My job was to provide super-quick, tight markets to a customer, and that was one of the key things that we were evaluated on as traders. If I ever had a [normal] office job, I would probably just fall asleep.”

With passion for his line of work, Frankenberger thrived and survived for 14 years, and he still loved his job when he decided to leave in 2009. However, a lack fulfillment in other areas of his life tipped the scales, even when quitting meant leaving a lot of money in restricted stock to his name left on the table.

“I let everything else in my life slide because I was so consumed by work. I was skipping the things in life that make you a human being.”

The man was now free to enjoy the fruits of his hard work — and eventually to conquer another game wherein millions can be on the line in a single decision.

Another Calculated Risk

Frankenberger has always taken risks that have left some puzzled. In high school, he spent a semester abroad in Siberia to learn Russian. For college, he turned down Harvard to attend Duke; he went with his gut feeling that he would be a happier person at Duke. This was also his motivation for leaving Wall Street to stop and smell the roses.

So, when he left his job on Wall Street, Frankenberger had absolutely nothing in mind.

“My immediate goal was to have no goals. I had just been so focused for so long that I needed to walk away and relax. Some people have the ability to think about what they want to do while they are doing something else, but despite my ability to multitask, I never allowed myself to think about other options while working. It wasn’t until I walked away that I began to think about what was next for me.”

Thus, suddenly with all the time in the world, Frankenberger did some traveling and took up leisurely activities such as photography and piano. He continued to trade with success and actively manage a portfolio of stocks and options — only now for himself, on his own time. What sounds like retirement to some was nothing of the sort to Frankenberger. He was soon to find his next calling in a casual card game he had been playing with friends for years.

While learning poker at home games in New York City circa 2003, Frankenberger was just an average participant at first. However, it wasn’t long before he was able to hold his own amidst a poker scene of his Wall Street coworkers.

It was only five years later, in 2008, that he found himself at a poker tournament in town, held for about 100 equity derivatives traders who all were competing for a World Series of Poker main-event seat. His boss at the time was a big card player, and Frankenberger wanted to impress his superior by making the final table. With that strategy in mind, he did make the final table, and he eventually won the super-satellite to Las Vegas.

“I thought my boss was even more excited than I was.” Despite busting out of his first main event close to the money, Frankenberger was enthralled by poker’s complexity and the buzz around the Rio Hotel and Casino.

“Poker was so up the alley with what I enjoy doing. I’m a super-competitive person, and in the main event, I was on the poker world’s biggest stage. I kind of knew then that if I ever had more time, I wanted to come back and try again.”

World Poker Tour Player Of The Year

Just about 18 months ago, when he finally decided to give poker his full attention, Frankenberger embarked on what would turn out to be one of the game’s most historic rookie years.

He cashed in five major tournaments between January and June of 2010, before breaking out with a win in a no-limit hold’em preliminary event at the Venetian Deep Stack Extravaganza for a six-figure payday. The summer wasn’t over before he found himself at another final table — this time the World Poker Tour Legends of Poker $5,000 no-limit hold’em main event at the Bicycle Casino in Los Angeles.

He entered with the chip lead, and even though he didn’t hold it wire to wire, he remained in control when it mattered, and at the end of the night, he held all of the chips in play. Frankenberger was awarded $750,000 for what was at the time his first major tournament title.

Just two months later, in October, the budding poker star made the final table of the WPT Festa Al Lago main event. He went on to cash again in a WPT event in December, and after a sweat, he was the new WPT Player of the Year. Not bad for a newcomer to the tournament circuit.

The WSOP Win

Despite winning the WPT Player of the Year honors in 2010 and his love for poker, Frankenberger would not allow himself to play if he didn’t think he could continue win.

“I didn’t come from money. I grew up in a single-parent home. I was on financial aid in college, so I came out of school with loans. I’ve always appreciated money, and never take it for granted. That’s why if I had a long losing streak in poker, for example as long as a whole year, I would have to reevaluate whether I should be playing the game as much as I am.”

The lackluster 2011 turned around in a heartbeat for Frankenberger after he waded through a minefield of 2,499 other players to take home the bracelet and the $599,153 first-place prize in a WSOP $1,500 no-limit hold’em event. Despite being down 3-1 to runner-up Josh Evans at one point during the heads-up duel, Frankenberger prevailed and validated his 2010 performance on the WPT. More important, he said it makes it far less likely that he will be departing poker anytime soon.

“Even though I love playing poker, if I don’t think I have an edge, or that it isn’t a wise investment of my time, energy, and resources, then I wouldn’t allow myself to continue. In order to keep playing, I need to win, and that’s the pressure I have created for myself. That’s why the bracelet was so huge for me.”

Grabbing the piece of poker history was aided by a calculated all-in bluff that Frankenberger made deep in the event against a big stack that was picking on his big blind. In a situation reminiscent of the confrontation with his keyboard-breaking boss on Wall Street, Frankenberger exposed the rags after the massive bluff in order to put the bullying to an end.

“If you don’t stand up for yourself at the poker table, just like on the trading floor, people are going to walk all over you. Standing up for yourself might be showing a bluff to make them back off.”

Not A Gambler

Frakenberger’s game has been geared toward trying to avoid tough spots and difficult decisions. He knows the importance of survival in tournament poker, and he never tries to win the event on the first day of play.

“When I look back at all of my deep runs, the bulk of my chips were not gathered in the early stages of the tournament.”

Another one of his strategies at the felt, which has proved to be extremely effective so far, involves deciding, before he starts down the road of a bluff, how many barrels he is willing to fire. He said he is well aware of his limitations at the poker table, a humbleness that developed in more than a decade on the trading floor.

“My strength as a trader was that I never thought I was smarter than the market. If I had a view or a trade that was going against me, I had to decide whether to put more in the trade or get out. This discipline and self-restraint comes into play in both fields. If you trade with ego, you are going to lose money, and if you play poker with ego, you are going to lose money. After I won WPT Legends, I thought the next time that I showed up to play, I would raise and everyone would fold. But it doesn’t work like that.”

His game is aggressive, and yet, in a way, conservative. He said that perhaps his greatest strength is avoiding tilt. His plays at the poker table are well thought out, as he doesn’t view himself as a gambler, or the game of poker as anything less than a display of one’s mental capacities.

“Some people will refer to me in casual conversations as a gambler, and I stop them and say, ‘I am not a gambler, I am a poker player.’ Anyone who thinks poker is happenstance probably doesn’t have a good grasp for the game. Luck can win you a hand — or even, if you are extremely fortunate, a tournament — but another tournament? No way. Evaluating the chance in any given hand is a skill, and it is a skill that I learned well as a trader.”

Despite his relatively late start in the game, Frankenberger is poker fresh, far from burnout, and totally in love with the game. He said that during the days of playing in a big poker tournament, there is not a single second when he is bored. Playing poker full-time as a professional is not a grind for him, but rather a reward after 14 years of hard work on Wall Street. Looking back, he is amazed at how far he has come in the poker world so quickly.

“If you had asked me what the chances were of this happening when I started playing a year and half ago, I would have put it at one in a million,” said Frankenberger, who wouldn’t rule out starting a hedge fund or returning to Wall Street at some point in the future. “It really is baffling to me to look back at my big wins. My friends don’t seem to be surprised now, which is kind of annoying. I told them that I was at a final table at the World Series of Poker, and they were like, ‘Of course you are, you are really good.’ I would have not thought all of this possible, but it does tap into my strengths and what I enjoy doing in life.”