Trump Picks Poker-Playing Billionaire As AdviserBanker Andy Beal Among Group To Help Trump On Economic Matters |
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Former Atlantic City casino boss Donald Trump, who everyone knows is currently running for President of the United States, has tapped a poker-playing billionaire to be a member of his team of economic advisers.
Texas banker and investor Andy Beal is among more than a dozen picked to help Trump lead the economy should he be elected. According to CNN Money, Beal founded Beal Bank, along with CSG Investments, Loan Acquisition Corp. and CLG Hedge Fund.
Forbes has his networth pegged at $10.7 billion, which makes him the 115th wealthiest person on the planet. His great wealth has allowed him to pursue one of his favorite pastimes: high-stakes poker. Actually, maybe the highest stakes ever played in Las Vegas.
The 63-year-old Beal got started playing poker in college and it has been reported that he might have used some of his poker winnings to fund some of his earliest business ventures. He ultimately dropped out of college to become a businessman.
Beal etched his name into poker history thanks to his losses more than a decade ago against the “Corporation,” which was a group of poker players that included the likes of Phil Ivey, Jennifer Harman, Ted Forrest and both Todd and Doyle Brunson. Over the course of a few years, the limit hold’em heads-up matches eventually had stakes as high as $100,000-$200,000.
In order to play Beal at such huge stakes, the poker pros pooled their money together.
The swings for both sides were enormous. The poker pros eventually got the better of him, as Beal lost more than $16 million in a three-day match versus Ivey in 2006, and then vowed to quit poker. Though he continued to play cards, he took many years off from competing against the game’s best at the nosebleed stakes.
That hiatus apparently ended just a couple years ago when Beal purportedly lost $16 million again, this time to Rick Salomon. Early last year, Todd Brunson said that he beat Beal out of $5 million playing hold’em with stakes of $50,000-$100,000.
Beal’s battle against the poker pros in the early-to-mid 2000s was chronicled in the book The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time.
While Beal has a love for poker, Trump’s VP pick, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, has previously supported efforts to ban online poker nationwide.
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