Dan Shak: Semi-Retired Hedge Fund Manager Banks $5 Million on Tournament Circuit

“I felt like a young kid who was a little bit lost,” Dan Shak laughed while remembering his early days on the trading floor in New York City. What started out as a simple passion for risk taking eventually led the New Jersey native all over the globe to compete in the world’s priciest tournaments.”

Shak took an alternative route to poker fame than most, but he has cemented his status as one of the game’s icons and has held his own with some of the best high-roller poker players in the world, cashing for more than $5 million in tournaments. Shak’s most recent win was for $450,000 in the PartyPoker Premiere League VI in late March.

Coming from a small-sized family, Shak had a “middle-class” upbringing, eventually finding friends in high school who loved to play poker on Friday nights. These casual home games were his first exposure to card playing, igniting a lifelong passion.

Before poker became a pillar of his life, Shak decided to gamble it up, so to speak, in the business world. He didn’t go to college, electing instead to jump right into trading. He didn’t want to waste any time after high school. As cliché as it sounds, he knew what he wanted.

He eventually gained the confidence — and success — necessary to stay afloat in the industry. One of Shak’s best traits is his ability to adapt to situations quickly, without becoming flustered, and evolve as the game — whichever one that may be — becomes more complex and tougher to beat. It’s one of the many parallels between trading and playing poker.

“It’s just about survival,” Shak said concisely.

Even though he’s fighting for his life in the worlds he has chosen to inhabit, Shak has found great personal joy in the social life he has constructed for himself. He’s a math guy, but what are numbers if the abstract concepts can’t be applied to real-world scenarios?

Going from trading to poker has been seamless for Shak, but he tries to keep his two worlds separate as much as possible. But, as one will soon find out, the overlap can’t be avoided.

Shak, who has living spaces in Las Vegas, New York and Los Angeles, considers his life to be on the road. It seems poker tournaments are held in every corner of the world these days.

Benefiting From The Poker Boom Post-2003

Shak said that he technically was part of the “Moneymaker Effect.” In 2003, Chris Moneymaker, an accountant from Tennessee, won the World Series of Poker main event for a record $2.5 million. His victory has been widely attributed to helping dramatically increase the popularity of the game. ESPN’s coverage of the tournament that year — arguably the most sophisticated and comprehensive the WSOP had ever received — also surely played a key role.

Unlike many, Shak was already well accustomed to battling it out on the felt and competing against really good players. But Moneymaker’s win, and the subsequent influx of new players and proliferation of games, did help him rekindle that passion. “We all watched him win and went back to playing,” Shak said. “You decide you want to challenge yourself.”

Getting back into poker, which was soon featured on a handful of networks, wasn’t about exposure or celebrity status for Shak. He’s a low-key guy, not too interested in the spotlight.

“I’m not a big media person,” Shak said. “I don’t turn down interviews, even though I did for many years. But that was basically because I ran a small hedge fund, and at that point poker wasn’t even at all a priority. Any sort of publicity from poker, for me, was maybe a negative.”

His feelings are different these days, primarily because he is “semi-retired.”

“I still work quite a bit,” Shak admitted.

Shak usually does some work during the early stages of tournaments, but if he goes deep, the tournament becomes his top priority. He would rather just be playing poker when he’s playing poker and working when he’s working, but it doesn’t usually work out that way. In some sense, Shak is a prolific juggler of tasks, a trait needed to quickly process information on the felt. His mental stamina allows him to manage the overlap between work and card playing.

Despite the intense passion for poker, Shak doesn’t envision himself fully retiring ever, as long as his “health holds up.”

Why Being A Trader Helped

Shak attributes his success in poker, at least partially, to having experience as a trader. He says that ever day he used “poker skills” to navigate the ins and outs of the stock market. Years of this exposure gave him the ability to read a situation correctly and develop a solid grasp for when he held the best of any given situation — and when it was time to fold.

When asked how he went from trading on his own to being involved with making money for others as well, Shak replied: “The hedge fund sort of happened because people kept asking me to trade for them, and I finally gave in around 2002. I did very well for nine years, but probably traded too big and then made a bad trade. I would equate it to someone playing poker and playing in too big of a game. You learn from it. There are a lot of parallels.”

Shak didn’t have success right away playing against the best, but it was the “best way to learn.”

“Back then, and today I guess, most poker shows are heavily edited. So you really don’t…they show the bust out hands. You really don’t see the skills of real poker unless you actually play. I don’t think you can really get it from watching the World Series of Poker on TV. Now at the final table they will show every hand, so in the last couple years things have changed a little bit. But back when I started playing, unless you sat down and paid the price to play with the best players you didn’t learn. There was no online poker at the time.”

According to Shak, he was too tight in the early days. “I was well known as a nit the first few years, and even though I am [still] on the tighter side, I would not call myself a nit anymore. I learned from the good players to open up my game. I don’t think I was good enough yet to play postflop with the really good players, so I think I was ‘nitty’ for good reason.”

Shak knows that you can’t judge your game based on a single tournament, or even a handful, but he does believe that over the long run, poker is results-oriented. He said that he would still play if he was a “small” loser over a large sample size. He would quit if he had abysmal results.

“I enjoy it so much. It’s a hobby, and people spend money on their hobbies. I’ve been fortunate enough; I don’t keep exact track [of wins and losses] but I’d assume overall I’m doing OK.”

Shak developed “camaraderie” with high-stakes poker pros. He said it’s a “tight-knit world.”

When asked whether the fact that poker is more of a hobby to him gives him any advantage over full-time poker pros that make their living on the felt, Shak said no. Once he ponies up the buy-in to play, he treats it as seriously as possible, pretty much on par with everyone else.

“I have a competitive spirit,” Shak said. “I don’t like losing any more than anyone else.”

The Big Aussie Millions Win

Shak has made a habit of cashing in high-roller tournaments. He has five cashes in events with buy-ins of $100,000 or more and a total of more than $3 million in winnings in those events alone.

The biggest win was the 2010 $100,000 Aussie Millions Championship tournament that attracted a field of 24 talented poker players willing to put up the $100,000 to enter. The top five players would walk away with prize money in the event, and the eventual champion would take home $1.2 million.

Shak entered the final table second in chips and remained so heads-up versus Phil Ivey. The stacks were Ivey with 1,381,000 and Shak with 1,057,000.

Shak pulled even and eventually took a slight lead after a series of small pots that started the heads-up final. He then took a large lead. Ivey raised to 90,000 from the button, and Shak made the call. The flop fell J 10 5, and Shak checked. Ivey bet 120,000, and Shak called. The turn brought the 8, and Shak checked again. Ivey bet 300,000, and Shak raised all-in. Ivey quickly mucked, and Shak grew his chip lead to a commanding 3-to-1 advantage.

The final hand arrived a short time later when Ivey opened the action with a 100,000 raise from the button, and Shak reraised all-in preflop. Ivey made the call, and they flipped over their cards. Ivey had the A 10, and Shak tabled the dominated A 7. However, the flop was fortunate for Shak as it fell Q 7 5. Ivey needed a 10 or running straight cards to win. But the turn and river were both bricks, and Shak was crowned the champion.

Shak said this tournament stands out because he and Ivey get along well and are “friendly.”

“I think Phil is the best player in the game,” Shak said. “Beating one of your best friends and someone who you respect more in the game than most people, I don’t see that moment being topped anytime soon, and if it is, that’s great.”

If one believes $100,000 buy-ins are at the top of Shak’s range, think again. He was one of 48 players at the 2012 World Series of Poker to enter the $1 million buy-in event.
So far, in 2013, Shak has six tournament cashes, good for $947,513 and is currently in sixth place in the Card Player Player of the Year race.

A Charity Player

In 2007, Shak won the $5,000 buy-in Ante Up for Africa tournament at the World Series of Poker. The foundation raised $700,000 that year, thanks in part to Shak donating his entire $243,893 payday back to the organization.

Fast forward to 2010 and Shak pledged to give at least 10 percent of his poker cashes that year to various charities. “While I usually keep my donations anonymous, in the poker world, if you do it anonymously, it doesn’t really do any good,” Shak said in 2010.

Shak himself has quietly donated to a variety of organizations over the years. He decided to make his pledge public that year in the hopes that other poker players might follow suit.

Shak cashed for nearly $1.6 million in 2010.

“I think people — no matter what career they choose, if they earn money in excess of money they need to live on or want to spend — have an obligation to donate to charity,” he said.

Shak has also hosted a charity poker tournament benefitting the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. The event runs every November in New York. He said the charity has gathered close to $5 million over five years. “It’s one that’s really close to my heart,” Shak said.

Shak’s efforts may have helped cast poker, as a game, in a better light for those outside of the community; however that has never been his purpose.

“It’s more that I have a lot of friends in poker and want to lead by example,” Shak said. “More and more are getting involved with charity. If somehow I had anything to do with it, which I probably don’t, but if I can at least perpetuate it, influence one or two people who normally wouldn’t give back, then I accomplish something.”

Poker’s Near-Term Outlook In Shak’s Eyes

Despite never being an online poker grinder, Shak realizes that the digital version of the game had a huge impact on poker’s prosperity for a number of years. When web poker came crashing to a halt in the United States in April 2011, everyone suffered. The game is still wounded.

Around the time Black Friday struck, six-figure poker buy-ins — sort of in an experiment phase at that point — were beginning to sprout up, as casinos and their tournament series partners realized there was a demand. Shak was one of those customers, using these new, stratospheric contests to find his poker rhythm. Shak’s personal success came alongside that of the tournaments themselves. However, the businessman has some concern about their rapid growth.

Shak said that the super high-roller events have been “stretched out a little bit,” and he’s not sure if the tournament calendar will support more of them. But he’s curious to see how millions of Full Tilt Poker money re-entering the poker economy will affect these big buy-in turn outs.

“I’m not optimistic on that money coming back anytime soon. I don’t think the game has quite yet recovered from $150 million being sucked out of the poker world. I think when that money comes back we will really find out if the poker boom, so to speak, is gone or if it’s on hold.”

2013 World Series Of Poker Plans

Shak is a regular in the highest buy-ins in the world, but last year at the World Series he found the desire to enter into all the smaller buy-in events as well. With exception for a small percentage of the high-stakes cash game community, bracelets are coveted in the poker world.

Grinding day in and day out last summer took its toll on Shak, who said he played “everything I could.” He doesn’t see himself doing it again come June. He’s worried about his play suffering.

Finding the right schedule for the summer is a balancing act for many players, as entering more events gives one more bullets to make a final table, but doing so can dull one’s focus and perhaps hurt one’s game. Some players feel they have a better shot at a bracelet by being selective with their tournaments, and Shak is now one of those with that mindset.

Last summer he finished in the top 40 in back-to-back $1,500 buy-in events within the first week of the Series, and then had three other cashes leading up to the $10,000 buy-in main event, in which he finished in 167th-place out of 6,598 entrants. It was a solid summer for Shak, but nonetheless exhausting and disappointing since he didn’t make a final table. He said that the long stretch of play made him feel less than 100 percent during many of those events.

“It just takes so much out of you,” he said. “It’s not that the small buy-in events are irrelevant, but just that from an energy [standpoint] I feel I am getting better results playing less right now. I am going to keep going with this tactic until it doesn’t work anymore.”

Shak has also decided to not devote as much mental energy thinking about winning a bracelet as he used to, for he thinks that the less you make something a goal the better chances you have to accomplish it. Poker is a game of patience, and sometimes just letting things come to you.

“I don’t like the added pressure of having to win a bracelet, and of course I’d love to, but I think I am more likely to win one with this mindset. If it’s meant to be; we don’t know if we’re going to wake up every day. I’m thankful I wake up every day, and if I win a bracelet one day I am sure it’s going to be exciting. But at this point I’m not sure whether it’s going to happen or not.” ♠