They call him "The Magician," as though there might be something magical about 28-year-old Antonio Esfandiari's speedy ascent to a high profile among the men and women tracking opportunities across the landscape of big time poker. Good timing and skill are more likeit.
He has more than $2.3 million in tournament winnings alone over a period of about four years.
The big one being the $10,000 no limit hold 'em championship at the World Poker Tour's main event in the 2004 LA Poker Classic at the Commerce Club. The win made him the youngest person at that time to take home a million-dollar first place prize, $1.4 million to be exact.
"That's the one that changed my life." Just to show that this success was no fluke he followed with a first place bracelet several months later in a $2,000 hold 'em event at the 2004 World Series of Poker.
"The Magician" was attracting serious notice and his timing could not have been better as poker was in the process becoming a phenomenon that reached way beyond the card rooms of Las Vegas, California and Atlantic City. The executives assembling the nuts and bolts of myriad network and cable poker shows were looking for the people able to hold their own as personalities.
The package of skill and personality that Esfandiari brought to the table made him a natural for events such as the Poker Superstars invitational competition and the National Heads-up Championship in addition to the wellreceived High Stakes Poker show on GSN. All this, of course, was in addition to his periodic appearances at the televised final tables of WSOP and WPT tournaments.
Life couldn't have been sweeter for the Iranian born young man who had been brought to the U.S. by a father sure his family would find a better life in America. The Iranian government limited the assets that the family could take out of the country with them, so when the family reached San Francisco, Antonio's dad "started over again," opening a restaurant in San Francisco that catered to an upscale lunch crowd.
Esfandiari was nursing a fascination with the inviting world of magic years before he discovered poker. There was no reason to anticipate the doors that poker would open. The irony is that although publicity and stories such as this lean on his nick name, "The Magician" has less time than ever for the magic that was once his big focus.
Call it a consequence of his success and the desire to grasp life-changing decisions as opportunities rolled down the road in his direction.
So what's ahead? It may be that the time he has available for poker will be the next aspect of his life to fall victim to the fast-moving chain of circumstances that have been reshaping the landscape of his life.
Esfandiari and good buddy and fellow poker pro Phil "The Unabomber" Laak are nearing the end of their work on the first eight segments of a proposed cable television reality show that works off the chemistry between them and their willingness to bet on just about anything as they act out the script that defines them as a couple of wild and crazy guys.
Look for it to begin airing by perhaps March on the high definition In Demand Channel. At the time of this discussion in late November they were reluctant to throw the door open to a discussion of all the details. There will be more when the time is right.
Esfandiari's early years in the San Francisco area offered no hint of what awaited him. He was a late bloomer as far as poker goes, and was 18 or 19 when he was visiting a bar where he saw someone perform a magic trick. It was a big, big moment in his life. The result was that he became "completely fixated on magic."
He headed for the local magic supply store, started looking around, doing some shopping and in no time at all was practicing two hours a day or more.
What was that first trick? "what it was, I'd have this deck of cards and tell you to name any card you want, and then I'd spread the cards and they were all face down except for your card."
What were the circumstances that saw him morph into a poker professional? "I started playing poker when I was," and he thinks about that for a moment, "when I was 19, maybe 20. My roommate at the time was a poker player and he kind of got me into it, giving me books to read. I read one of the books, started doing what the book told me to do and that was it."
As though anything could have been easier. He met Phil Laak at the World Series five or six years ago. They got to talking, hit it off and discovered that everything they were learning about poker provided the fuel for continuing conversations.
"Phil was living in New York then and I was out here, but we stayed in touch, me telling him about how much money I was making playing poker . . .
"He came out for a weekend and just never went back home and we became very good friends and have been running around together for the last five or six years. In a way, I guess we did come up together, but not from the very beginning."
Esfandiari never wallowed in apprehension about his ability to make it in the poker business. Success was meant to be, or something like that. "I think I always knew that I was going to win big, but obviously winning that Commerce tournament where I got the $1.4 million gave me a shot of confidence." And the television show? "I'm guessing that people saw clips of Phil and me together or they played poker with us and thought we had a natural chemistry. We're both good by ourselves, but we are ten times better when we are with each other"
The way it's evolved, the producers have the two doing "random, crazy things" in competition with each other. We're always competing."
The show will be called "I Bet You."
But what are the crazy things?
"Stuff like who's the better bartender? Who can panhandle better? It's a reality show, me and Phil versus each other. I've seen a couple of rough cuts of the first couple of episodes and they are funny."
Sometimes the cameras are hidden. Sometimes they are not. It all depends on the nature of the on-screen action.
"If this goes, it could be huge. Poker players have done television before, but nothing that took them out of poker. Talking on the telephone, he seems to give it a what more can I say kind of shrug.
"I'm excited. We'll just have to see how it goes." As with all such things, Esfandiari concedes, it is the big, wide world of television viewers that will determine the outcome of this venture. And so he is keeping his fingers crossed, cautiously optimistic, but at this point in his life Esfandiari has confidence in his ability to make good decisions.
And everything about the venture feels right. Esfandiari has also been involved in some how-to ventures, a book and a DVD that offers pointers on how to avoid being cheated, but he is not sure what is happening with the marketing efforts behind either of these projects.
He has his own website and can be found playing poker at Ultimate Bet.com which has signed him as a representative along with the likes of Phil Hellmuth and Annie Duke.
Esfandiari can see the effect In the few weeks since Congress passed legislation aimed at shutting down the money transfer mechanisms that have fueled Internet poker's voracious appetite.
"Party Poker is out, of course. So are some of the others and that has just been a huge thing for the sites that are still hosting games (such as Ultimate Bet.) I don't know where the situation is going from here, but we shall see," Who could have imagined, he asks rhetorically, all that has occurred in the poker business in just the last few years? Where there is a will someone will find a way of playing the game, is what he seems to suggest.
Esfandiari has considered Las Vegas his home for the last two years and is currently on the road "about half the time," traveling the tournament circuit.
"I get on the Internet to play about 10 hours a week, but I don't play as much poker as some people might imagine. There are just so many other things going on."
The television show, for instance.
"I had to miss about four of the recent World Poker Tour tournaments to give this TV show the time it requires. We filmed in Southern California, did a couple (segments)in Las Vegas and we are going to be working in New York."
