Vinny Pahuja Bio

Pahuja got started by grinding away in some of the smaller events both in Las Vegas and in the Northeast, where he calls home. In March 2008, he took second in a $1,000 prelim to get the ball rolling. Over the next three weeks, he made three more final tables, including a win in event No. 1 of the Foxwoods Poker Classic for $75,000. He followed that up with another win in April during the Venetian Deep Stack Extravaganza, but he truly emerged in June, when he finished as runner-up in the $5,000 championship event at the Borgata Summer Open for $289,800.

The native New Yorker got his start in poker in a rather familiar way, but he's always made sure to have a backup plan. "I was pretty much a by-product of the Moneymaker boom," recalls Pahuja. "We were watching ESPN in 2003, seeing him win it all, and we decided to have a weekly $20 game just for fun. Every Sunday, right before The Sopranos came on, we'd have this poker game. I just took off with it and started playing in a lot of the New York City clubs. The Playstation, The Player's Club, Straddle, all of the different clubs before they went bust. That's where I really learned the game, playing with all of the best players in the city."

The poker bug had bit, but Pahuja still didn't have the time he wanted to devote to his new love. "I went to NYU and got two degrees during undergrad in finance and information systems," he said. "I took that and then I worked on Wall Street for five years, but then in May 2007 I started to get really sick of it. I wasn't happy and decided to quit. Not to play poker, mind you, but just to do something, anything different. I wanted to do something a little more entrepreneurial with my life. I ended up getting involved in real estate, which I still do on the side, but that freed up my time to play a lot more poker."