Meet Your Chip Leader: Ryan Lenaghan

Ryan Lenaghan holds a chip lead of 2,885,000 over his next closest competitor after day 6 in the 2011 World Series of Poker main event. His stack of 12,865,000 towers above the rest of the field and it gives him 214 big blinds going into day 7.

Lenaghan has been playing poker seriously for four years now. He is a graduate of Louisiana State University [LSU], where he also ran cross country on the school’s accomplished track and field team. Card Player caught up with Lenaghan at an impromptu press conference after day 6 in the Amazon Room. He talked about his initial poker experience and the increased pressure of playing with the chip lead in the largest poker tournament of the year.

Question: Tell us about the day you’ve had?

Ryan Lenaghan: It was a good day. It was one of the better days, one of the best days I’ve had playing poker. I started out with a pretty big stack and pretty much everything went my way. If I had a bluff it went through, if I had a big hand it held up. I constantly chipped up throughout the day and won some big pots.

Q: How did you first come to poker?

RL: I pretty much started playing right around the Chris Moneymaker win. I watched it on TV and started to play the game with friends when I graduated from high school. I started playing online a little bit off and on until I was 21 and then I started playing mostly live after that. I would say I have been playing seriously for three or four years for a living.

I live in New Orleans so I play at the Harrah’s there all the time. I really like the Beau Rivage in Biloxi [Mississippi]; I play there a lot too.

Q: How have you been dealing with the increased media attention and bright lights of the cameras with each subsequent day of the tournament?

RL: I haven’t paid a ton of attention to it. This was the first day where I had a ton of chips so it’s the first day where it has been a lot on me. I have just been trying to play good poker and not make any mistakes.

Q: It must be interesting to live in New Orleans. Can you tell us a little bit about your background?

RL: I’m actually from Mobile, Alabama but it is much cooler to say that you’re from New Orleans [Laughs]. I’m from Mobile and I was always into track and cross country in high school and I ended up walking on to the LSU track and field team and ran for two years. After two years I was just tired of it and that was when I got so much more into poker so I focused on that a lot. I kind of gave up running and just started playing poker as much as I could.

I graduated from LSU with a general studies degree. I had a 2.8 GPA and you had to have a 3.0 GPA to get into the business school at LSU. I knew I was going to play poker no matter what, but my parents were like, “If you want to do that, that’s fine but you should get a degree just in case.” Instead of pulling my GPA up you can get a general studies degree, which is three minors there so I just got that degree and they were happy with that [Laughs].

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