Russell Rosenblum

Hometown
New York, NY

Total Winnings
$381,265

Russell Rosenblum's mother was a bad poker player. At least, that's how Rosenblum tells the story. By the time the young Rosenblum had turned six, his father had tired of playing with his mother and the matriarch of the house had no choice but to teach her son to play. By the time he was eight, he was crushing his mother in the games. Fast forward to the 1990s when legal, live poker started getting big on the East Coast. Rosenblum took up the game seriously. Although he moved to Washington D.C. and started working as a lawyer, Rosenblum had bigger dreams. While he played poker on the side, he envisioned a life of entrepreneurial fortune. He opened a burger joint in the D.C.-area and continued to work on his poker game. His work started paying off in 2002 when he made the final table of the World Series of Poker main event. That year, he took sixth place and won $150,000. A year later, he really hit the big time when he made the final table of the World Poker Tour Season 2 Five Star World Poker Classic. He took fifth place and won more than $300,000. Rosenblum does not play full-time on the circuit, but still plays a number of tournaments every year and makes a nice side income from poker.