Sam Farha

Born in Lebanon, in 1959 (it’s amazing how many top-class poker professionals this little country has given the world), Ishan Farha is one of the few professional poker players who do as well live as online.

His closest encounter with world-fame happened in 2003 when he finished 2nd to Chris Moneymaker, in the WSOP’s main event, after a heated battle in which luck just didn’t side with him. He took revenge for that bad beat a few weeks later on PokerStars, but the damage was already done and Moneymaker had stolen the lime-light from him for good.

Even as a kid, Farha proved extremely skilled in pool and pinball, and achieved some pretty spectacular results in these games, which got him on the covers of several national specialty-magazines. His family was forced to move by the outbreak of the Lebanese civil war, and they chose the U.S.

Having settled down in Wichita, the young Farha attended the University of Kansas where he earned a degree in business administration. His first encounter with the game of poker proved an extremely pleasant one and resulted in his pocketing several thousand dollars. At that time, he had been living in Houston with for about a year, and working with his brother but he soon quit his job to play poker full-time.

He is generally considered a very well-to-do person, but word has it that the majority of his income does not come from poker, but rather from the multitude of businesses he’s involved in.

One would commit a grievous mistake to underestimate Sam Farha’s gambling and poker income though. On that WSOP main event second place alone he took home $1.3 million (more than some previous winners), and he has been known to win big bets in other forms of gambling too.

He has two WSOP bracelets to show (he won the first one in 1996, in the $2,500 PL Omaha event and pocketed nearly $150k, then he won another bracelet in 2006, in the FL Omaha event, for a prize of about $400k.)

All in all, he finished in the money 5 times in WSOP events, and three times in WPT ones. He’s known as a non smoker, yet he often holds an unlit cigarette in his mouth when playing poker. Whenever a bad beat hits him, he switches to a different cigarette.

One of his nicknames is Mr. Cool, (because he’s always very serene at the table) the other one is Are You Serious? A phrase he repeats all time.

His style of play (an aggressive go-getting kind of attitude based on the intimidation of his opponents) is said to have revolutionized poker.

Check him out on High Stakes Poker and you’ll see what I’m talking about.