February 2006 - 12

A winning
hand:
Bridge
and poker
A shared interest for Barry
"Robin Hood" Greenstein.
By Karen Walker

arry Greenstein is not your ordinary
bridge player. A Life Master, he was an
avid tournament player while in graduate
school in the Eighties, when he supported
himself with poker winnings.
He continued playing both games after moving to
California to work as a software developer, but poker
soon became a more consuming interest. At age 36,
he made the decision to quit his job and play poker
full-time.
Barry did well in private games, but was virtually
unknown until he began entering poker tournaments,
which brought him fame as one of the most successful players of the last decade.
He's also the most benevolent. Known as the "Robin
Hood of Poker," Barry donates 100 percent of his
tournament winnings to charity. In just the last few
years, he's given more than $3 million to 14 organizations. The major beneficiaries include Children
Incorporated and his alma maters - Bogan High
School in Chicago IL and the University of Illinois in
Champaign.
Barry, who now lives in Rancho Palos Verdes CA,
has six children, ages 16 through 31. He plays in a
few poker tournaments each month, as well as the
highest cash games. He has published a poker book,
Ace on the River.
Barry still pursues his interest in bridge. Here, he
shares his thoughts on what makes poker and bridge
so much alike - and so different.
When do you find time to play bridge?
I play online, mostly late at night. I do it to relax
or procrastinate and I'm not as competitive as I once
was. When I was playing in lots of bridge tournaments, I used to play better as the week went on.
Now, playing so sporadically, I find it hard to stay
sharp and in tune with the game.

How do your bridge skills translate to poker?
Bridge definitely helped me become a better poker
player because I use many of the same strategies. At
both poker and bridge, I try to deduce what my opponents hold and then play double-dummy.
Bridge also taught me how to think through possibilities and improve my game. I learned a lot from all
those years of playing at the club and then sitting up
half the night analyzing the hands with friends.
Many of the top poker players seem to have their
own philosophies about the game. What's yours?
It's pretty close to my philosophy about bridge. I've
always said that the game of bridge is better than all the
players. As a mathematician, I see bridge as pure and
logical, but everyone who plays it makes mistakes.
I took that philosophy to poker. Instead of trying
to prove I'm better than other players, I've worked at
mastering the subtleties of the game itself and trying to
make fewer mistakes than my opponents.
How do you handle the different ethical considerations of each game?
Poker players have to be aware of their opponents as
people, and that involves watching their facial expressions, their hesitations, how they're holding their cards.
Using this information would be considered cheating at
bridge, but it's an integral part of poker.
I'd been developing those "people-reading" skills
Bridge Bulletin

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of February 2006