Anthony Zinno: Breakout Poker Star Wins Three World Poker Tour Titles

There are only three players in the 13-year history of the World Poker Tour to win three titles. Two of them, Carlos Mortensen and Gus Hansen, are some of the most recognizable faces in the poker world since even before the Moneymaker boom. The third, Anthony Zinno, just started playing in WPT events three years ago.

Zinno, a 33-year-old lawyer turned poker pro, won the 2013 Borgata Poker Open for $825,099. Then, after a break, he won the Fallsview Poker Classic in early 2015 for another $252,420. At the very next tournament, the L.A. Poker Classic, Zinno became just the third player to ever win back-to-back WPT events when he topped a huge field for a $1,015,860 payday. He then traveled to San Jose for the Bay 101 Shooting Star, only to bubble the main event, jump into the $25,000 high roller event, and win that as well for an additional $197,758.

In total, the Cranston, Rhode Island native now has more than $3 million in career live tournament earnings, despite only traveling the circuit for a short time. As a result of his hot start in 2015, Zinno maintains a sizable lead in the Card Player Player of the Year race.

Card Player spoke to Zinno during some downtime to discuss his introduction to the game and becoming this year’s breakout star.

Julio Rodriguez: Can you talk a little bit about your childhood? What was your family like?

Anthony Zinno: My childhood was always fun, whether it was hanging out with the kids in my neighborhood, playing video games, collecting sports cards, or eating meatballs at a family member’s home. I always liked school quite a bit and tried my best to be a B+ student. That way, it wasn’t too much work. Overall, my education wasn’t too stressful because the teachers weren’t overly judgmental and the students weren’t competitive, which is exactly the way I think school should be.

I have a sister, and we’ve always been close. She’s supported my poker career since day one. My father was an orthodontist, and although he passed away when I was 15, he left me with great memories and life lessons. He was hard working, patient, and kind, as long as you didn’t piss him off [laughing]. My mother is the strongest woman that I’ve ever met. She lost her mom to lung cancer when I was a baby and her husband when I was a teenager, but she never stopped plugging away. She’s the source of my perseverance.

JR: What were your initial passions and ambitions in life before poker?

AZ: When I took off for undergraduate studies at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, all I knew was that I loved science and math. I chose to study chemical engineering because my cousin had told me that it was the most difficult major and quite broad. I enjoyed the challenge, met some cool people, and college flew by. In my last year of college, I learned that engineers can consider a shot at law school and pursue patent law. The idea of legally representing scientists’ ideas before the U.S. Patent Office sounded challenging, and I had heard that there was a strong demand for more patent attorneys. I really enjoyed my three years at Suffolk University Law School, then passed the Massachusetts bar exam. However, my passion for competitive poker had developed in those years, as well as an overwhelming desire to travel and see more of the world and various cultures. I decided to chase that dream. Someday, I may settle down and have kids, but right now my focus is on poker travels. Quoting my favorite band, “I’m reaching for the random, or whatever will bewilder me. And following our will (and wind), we may just go where no one’s been.”

JR: What are some of your earliest poker memories?

AZ: My earlier poker memories are playing 5-card draw with my friends as a kid for pennies. I discovered competitive poker by watching it on TV around 2003, and started playing a little bit online in 2004. College made it difficult to put a lot of time into my poker game, so I couldn’t play full-time until passing the bar in 2008. I’ve always been drawn to games that involve a lot of strategy, so I took naturally to no-limit hold’em. I’m 100 percent self-taught by putting in the hours, with a heavy focus on correcting my mistakes. These mistakes were a mix of mathematical or psychological errors. My goal for years was to prioritize fixing even the smallest mistakes. This was more important to me than making money. In a poker career, a penny lost today can be worth a dollar long-term because of the lesson.

JR: Is there anything about the game of poker that you don’t enjoy?

AZ: Something that has really surprised me for the past 10 years is the fact that many people categorize poker with casino games like blackjack, which is primarily based on chance. It frustrates me tremendously that we can buy unlimited lottery and scratch-off tickets alongside our milk and eggs, or pump our net worth into penny stocks, but can’t legally play a $20 nightly poker tournament at the local bar. I’m pretty sure that as the years go by, more and more people will embrace poker as a game of skill.

JR: At what point did you feel like you belonged in the poker world?

AZ: I’ve always been a gamer, so I felt connected to the poker world right away. From Atari, to Commodore 64, to NES, to SNES, to computer games, if they were challenging, I was playing to win. I actually paid for my housing and food expenses during my undergrad by selling acquired items in a game called Ultima Online on eBay. I used to play quite a bit of CounterStrike, too. Having climbed my way to the top of some very competitive games fueled my confidence to jump into the poker world and try the same thing.

JR: You came out of nowhere in 2013 and won more than seven figures. How did the money change your life? How did that success change the way you approached poker as a business? 

AZ: In 2013, I put in a much heavier volume of tournaments, eventually nailing the WPT Borgata Poker Open, and ended up having my first seven-figure year. This helped me pay off a chunk of law school loans, fuel the poker roll, donate a little more, and invest money into the stock market, which admittedly, has plenty of gamble. My psychological goal was to acknowledge the fact that I had beaten the odds by acquiring a WPT title with few attempts, thereby allowing myself to appreciate the money much more. Leading up to 2013, I had put tremendous time into my game, so in 2014 I thought it was best to enjoy some time off. It seems to have been the correct decision because I’ve definitely been on my A-game this year. If I’m not prepared to bring the A-game, I won’t play a tourney.

JR: You’ve also had your fair share of close calls in some tournaments. Are you hard on yourself when you fall just short of a win or do you just chalk it up to variance?

AZ: Over the years, I’ve had plenty of close calls, where one late coin flip or bad beat sent me to the rail. As brutal as this can be, it’s just part of tournament variance. The only times that I’ll be the least bit upset these days is if I make an error. I’ve put too many hours in over the years to make mistakes. The beauty of tournaments, though, is that there is so much room for error. It could be something as small as missing a little extra value, but it’s happening all around us as we play. This is what makes the game so incredibly complex over the course of a long tournament. In my opinion, the best way to improve our game is to take note of our mistakes. Write them down if need be. And if it happens again, cut off one of your fingers to serve as a warning and reminder that mistakes aren’t tolerated. Maybe I’ve been watching too much Game of Thrones, but you get the idea.

JR: What does it feel like to have three WPT titles on your resume?

AZ: Winning my third WPT title was incredible! My first two titles involved a steady climb of chips leading to heads-up play, but this one was wild. I entered fifth out of six in chip position and steadily climbed up to a healthy stack, only to find myself smashed down to a short stack when my pocket nines lost a flip to Chris Klodnicki’s K-Q with four left. Then I battled my way back and eventually knocked him out in third with pocket sixes against his K-J. The feeling of the adrenaline rush going into heads-up play for a WPT trophy is, quite literally, indescribable. I managed to defeat the tremendously-skilled Mike Leah for the win, and then pretty much lost all brain function and went straight for the champagne, because it had been six grueling days of thinking. It meant so much to have some close friends in the audience, and so many friends and family supporting me from afar. Here is my opportunity to give my sincere thanks to everyone.

The best way to describe my feeling about winning a third WPT title is simply grateful. The reason for this is that I fully understand the math against winning three WPT trophies in large fields in a year and a half span, no matter how good you are. The math may dictate a likelihood of some strong top 27 finishes, but I’ve clearly beaten the odds, and plan to continue doing so! Nonetheless, the titles are invaluable to me. I’m quite proud that they were the result of years of hard work.

JR: Do you feel like you have a good handle on what it takes to do well in these events or is it more about being in the right place at the right time?

AZ: I’ve got quite a grasp of deep stack no-limit events with good structures because of my experience maneuvering every type of stack, from eight big blinds to 200 big blinds. Deep-stack poker, where average stack sizes tend to be around 50 big blinds throughout the late stages of a tournament, is a rather complex variant of the game, which means that skill and experience is going to play a much bigger part over the course of five full days. That brings up a really interesting aspect of poker as a whole, in that everyone can sort of find their comfort zone and make it their goal to excel there.

JR: Does all of this success justify your decision to forego a career in law to play poker in your mind?

AZ: I’ve probably made more money than I would have as a patent attorney, but it was never about that. It was more about the freedom and love of the game. I’ve been able to craft my own schedule and travel wherever I wanted to, and although the time commitment has involved many sacrifices, it has definitely been the correct path for me. I just want to make sure to mention to recreational players that professional poker, just like any professional sport, is tremendously difficult. The past seven years have involved many ups and downs that could have driven me crazy if I didn’t have such a passion for the game and all that it entails. Perseverance certainly paid off, though, and I’ve never been happier in my life. ♠

Zinno Walks Us Through A World Poker Tour Tournament

In less than two years, Anthony Zinno has become a staple of the World Poker Tour circuit, cashing in 10 different events while winning three titles for a combined $2.25 million. Here, he gives us his thoughts on how to navigate the fields in these events, which often feature slow structures and long days.

“Early on in WPT events, we need to remember that just because we start with a lot of chips doesn’t mean that a chunk of your stack isn’t valuable. I see a lot of recreational players punt off 25 or more big blinds early on because they get overly involved in what seems to be a rush for some action.”

“Something interesting that I’ve realized over the years is that many players, even some pros, feel more comfortable with a short stack than a big stack. I understand that this is what they have the most experience with, but they should aim to improve their game until they are equally as comfortable playing a deep stack.”

“My advice to recreational players is to take themselves out of their comfort zone (whether it be deep or short stacked) in between tournaments, and practice. This way, when they find themselves deep stacked in a big tourney, they’ll know how to maneuver and perhaps find low-variance spots to chip up instead of just nervously piling too many big blinds in. Or, when short stacked, they’ll know precisely whether they should be shoving or raising (and then whether they should call, or fold, if an opponent puts them all in).”

“At a final table, there are obvious Independent Chip Model (ICM) implications that all players should be aware of. However, it’s good to distinguish the players that are playing for pay jumps from the ones that are playing for a trophy, because the latter is likely to be more aggressive. At my first WPT final table, I was pretty nervous because of all the cameras and large pay jumps, so I definitely played tighter than I normally would have. It happened to work in my favor but it could just as well have backfired!”

“For my more recent wins, I was able to change up the gears a bit and put some pressure on my opponents, which worked well. Interestingly, these are often the smaller pots that don’t get shown on TV, but they make quite a difference in the subsequent game flow.”