That is Half 1 of two of a collection on Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian’s time as a sponsored poker professional from 2008 to 2011.
Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian has offered hundreds of thousands of information, performed to 50,000 metal-heads at Yankee Stadium, and even been credited with bringing mosh pits into the general public lexicon. The metallic legend has additionally multi-tabled high-stakes on-line tournaments, partied with poker legends within the Caribbean and performed poker whereas on stage with the band he has led for 45 years.
Almost 20 years in the past, Ian, whose band Anthrax is credited as one of many “Large 4” of thrash metallic alongside the likes of Metallica, stumbled right into a aspect profession as a sponsored poker professional. Ian’s poker run, which started within the late 2000s and led to 2011, noticed him enjoying as a lot as 90 hours per week and profiting hundreds of {dollars} in on-line poker video games that he stated have been “like an ATM machine for me.”
“I turned a kind of (poker) degenerates that I used to be so keen on,” the Anthrax guitarist stated. “And it was such a tremendous … anomaly in my life.”
Throughout an April journey to Las Vegas to offer guided excursions on the Punk Rock Museum, Ian, who’s again on tour with Anthrax and making ready to launch the band’s first album in a decade, spoke with PokerNews about his four-year stint within the poker world.
Learn About Musicians Who Play Poker
Laying the Godsmack Down
Poker wasn’t part of Ian’s formative years rising up in Queens, New York. In 1981, 18-year-old Ian was busy founding Anthrax, a band that might go on to promote hundreds of thousands of information and be acknowledged as the most important metallic bands of all time. Ian’s iconic gray (and typically black or purple) goatee, nonetheless intact to this present day, would additionally develop into an immediately recognizable metallic emblem.
Aside from enjoying Seven Card Stud just a few instances as a child along with his mother, the guitarist was an entire poker beginner when he was invited to play within the 2006 VH1 Basic Rock ‘n’ Roll Movie star Poker Match, an occasion at Flamingo Las Vegas that includes a lineup of rock stars together with KISS’ Ace Frehley and Pantera’s Vinnie Paul.
“I went into that VH1 event not even figuring out play Maintain’em,” Ian stated. “The one purpose I performed in that event was as a result of a bunch of my buddies have been enjoying in it. And I knew folks at VH1, and I figured, wow, what a fantastic excuse to go occasion with some buddies in Vegas for the weekend. So I type of snuck myself into that event.”
Ian ready by watching episodes of Poker After Darkish, the place he studied poker gamers like Phil Hellmuth, Antonio Esfandiari and Phil Laak as they fought over six-figure pots. He’d meet all three on the VH1 event, which was run by World Poker Tour (WPT) Match Director Matt Savage.
“(That) positively was a time period that I keep in mind,” Savage informed PokerNews. “That is when poker was at its hottest and increasingly more celebrities have been enjoying.”
Regardless of having completed his homework, Ian didn’t have excessive hopes when he sat down towards the likes of ZZTop’s Dusty Hill and seasoned grinder Godsmack frontman Sully Erna, a critical participant who would go on to complete runner-up within the 2007 Doyle Brunson 5 Diamond World Poker Basic for $307,325.
“I simply figured, I am simply going to bust out of this in 5 minutes after which go grasp with my spouse and go drink and hang around and have enjoyable,” Ian stated.
However, as Ian put it, “the universe had different issues in thoughts for me.” He watched as his fellow rockstars have been eradicated from the single-table event and finally discovered himself heads-up towards Erna, far and away the extra skilled participant.
Regardless of being “a rank newbie” and down “like 4 or 5 to at least one in chips,” Ian, who entered the occasion as a timid and passive participant, had sufficient instinct to know to be aggressive when he acquired dealt an ace the primary few palms of heads-up play.
“Whilst little as I knew about enjoying Maintain’em, I knew that having an ace heads-up was actually sturdy,” he stated. “So I went from being the tightest participant on the planet who did not know what the hell he was doing, to all of a sudden I used to be simply being tremendous aggressive … It was like in Rocky when he goes from southpaw to regular.”
Ian ended up beating Erna, successful a $25,000 examine made out to a charity of his selection — he went with Lifebeat Inc., a nonprofit that companions with musicians to forestall HIV amongst youth.
Towards all odds, Ian beat Erna to win a $25,000 examine for a charity of his selection and a “humorous little trophy that I took residence” to Los Angeles. However his poker arc was simply starting.
Celebration Like a Poker Participant
“I used to be like, these persons are crazier than anybody I do know in a band.”
Ian was shocked just a few months later when he acquired a name “out of the blue” from a consultant of the poker website Final Guess, who informed him that, as a part of his prize bundle within the VH1 event, he had gained a visit to the 2007 Final Guess Aruba Poker Basic, one of many premiere poker festivals on the time. He could not move up on a free journey to the Caribbean.
Although he rapidly busted out of the event — “I ended up shoving kings towards aces” — he and his spouse Pearl caught round to spend the week partying with Hellmuth and Final Guess on-line professionals Mark “P0ker H0″ Kroon, Gary “DEBO34” DeBernarndi and Shawn Rice, all of whom stay buddies with Ian virtually 20 years later.
“It was solely after we went to Aruba that he and I began hanging out,” Hellmuth informed PokerNews in an interview. “And I am like, this man is so sensible, so enjoyable. I used to be simply struck by how nice Scott is.”
“He is (a) actually all the way down to earth man,” agreed Rice, a longtime Texas professional who, regardless of admitting that Anthrax is “in all probability a bit of bit too onerous for my liking,” immediately bonded with the guitarist over their shared love of KISS. “We had a number of frequent (musical) affect(s). He is actually a music fan total. He likes all completely different genres.”
Ian returned to the Aruba Basic the subsequent few years and documented it on a YouTube channel referred to as “scottianpoker.” A video taken throughout the opening bash ceremony of the 2009 competition reveals Ian swimming, at night time, round a pool crowded with poker gamers like 2006 WSOP Participant of the 12 months Jeff Madsen, poker star Liv Boeree and Hellmuth, who saved his shirt on within the pool and held a microphone as he emceed the opening ceremony in waist-deep water.
“Final Guess Aruba. Fairly f***ing candy!” Ian cheers within the video.
Hellmuth even hosted events in his three-bedroom Aruba penthouse that he stated was “as massive as the entire resort.” One 12 months, he paid the guitarist to play stay music on the occasion. “This was no regular penthouse,” the 17-time bracelet winner stated. “We would have events out on the rooftop.”
“I (acquired) to hang around with all these tremendous degenerate poker gamers,” Ian informed PokerNews. “Partying and prop bets and the entire thing. I used to be like, these persons are crazier than anybody I do know in a band. It was … a world I used to be accustomed to (as a musician), but it was fully completely different.”
Kroon remembers going out to “a reasonably high-end steak place in Aruba” with Ian, Godsmack’s Erna and an elite group of poker gamers that included Esfandiari and Dave “Devilfish” Ulliott. Like good poker gamers, they determined to settle the invoice over a guess. The invoice for the large occasion was round $2,000, however Ian, not figuring out they have been supposed to put in writing down their solutions, blurted out a lowball guess of $500 to convey laughs from the desk.
“And it was simply humorous that Scott had no clue (what the worth was going to be),” Kroon stated. “He actually thought it was going to be a $500 invoice when it was a $2,000 invoice. And all of us have been teasing him about that.”
Signing With Final Guess
Ian was about to get far more accustomed to the poker world. Will Griffiths, the chief advertising officer of Final Guess and Absolute Poker, informed Ian they needed to signal him as a website workforce professional. Ian wasn’t positive. In any case, he was an inexperienced poker participant.
“We’re not signing you to your poker abilities,” he remembers Griffiths telling him. “It is your face and your identify, and clearly folks will need to come play with you and deposit cash on the positioning.”
Ian did not just like the sound of that. “If I will do it, I need to know what I am doing,” he informed the positioning government. “You man’s gotta get me poker classes.”
Pushing for poker teaching paid off. After signing with Final Guess in March 2008, the positioning set him up with teaching from Hellmuth and fellow website professional Annie Duke, who, like Ian, lived in LA. (Final Guess was later revealed to be concerned in a super-using scandal that cheated gamers out of tens of hundreds of thousands. Whereas most sponsored professionals related to the positioning emerged with their reputations unscathed, Duke was accused of figuring out in regards to the dishonest, which she denied. She has since pivoted to a profession as a psychology author.)
“Over the subsequent month, just a few instances per week, I’d go to Annie’s home,” Ian stated, “and she or he would educate me play, and all the maths and all that.”
Duke could also be persona non grata within the poker world right this moment, each on account of her affiliation with Final Guess and the failed Epic Poker League, however Ian described the participant with $4.2 million in earnings as “a fantastic instructor.”
“Annie actually type of knew educate me and knew make me perceive the sport, like how my mind works. And I’m very math-brained, so it labored very properly for me.”
“In my view, Annie Duke’s in all probability top-of-the-line lecturers (from) again within the day there was,” agreed Rice, whereas Kroon famous that Ian absorbed the poker teaching “like a sponge.”
Poker on Tour — And on Stage
Ian developed right into a seasoned on-line grinder all through 2008 and 2009. He referred to as in to the “Final Poker Present” on Rounders Radio to debate poker palms and appeared on the Greatest Rattling Poker Present, a actuality TV poker present the place two groups led by Hellmuth and Duke competed over a seven-week interval.
“My poker recreation simply grew and grew in a short time,” he stated, noting that, when residence in LA, he would play 16 to twenty tables at a time on an enormous pc monitor. “I knew nothing about something (at first), and three months later I am enjoying six-seat $100 and $200 Turbo Sit and Gos. And so they have been like an ATM machine for me.”
Ian continued to doc the journey on YouTube. One video reveals him enjoying on-line poker from his resort room on the Laborious Rock Las Vegas Lodge & On line casino, whereas one other video titled “Texas Drunk’em” reveals him enjoying poker at Laborious Rock with Alice in Chains frontman Jerry Cantrell and Pantera drummer Vinnie Paul, who he’d performed with within the VH1 event.
A poker profession spotlight got here in March 2009 as Ian beat out 1,007 gamers in a $200,000 assured Sunday event for $44,000. He had beforehand completed fourth, seventh and ninth within the occasion, the place, as an Final Guess ambassador, he had a $215 bounty on his head.
“He really turned a reasonably darn-good participant,” stated Kroon. “He was so tight you could not get him to place a chip within the pot at first, after which we acquired him loosened up … He actually picked up on it.”
WPT’s Matt Savage had an identical evaluation: “He and Sully Urna have been two of the higher (movie star) poker gamers that I keep in mind from again in that point, positively. They knew what they have been doing.”
Poker was additionally a wanted escape for the Anthrax guitarist throughout a tumultuous interval that noticed the band unceremoniously parting methods with lead singer Dan Nelson. By the point Anthrax reunited with their classic-era singer Joey Belladonna in Might 2010 to tour Europe and the U.S. with Metallica, Slayer and Megadeth, Ian was all-in on his new interest. And on tour was when the actual poker started.
Whereas on tour with Anthrax on the flip of the last decade, Ian performed in dressing rooms, on enviornment phases throughout sound checks and on the again of European tour buses — usually in the course of the night time, because the tournaments have been scheduled round American gamers.
“There have been weeks the place I performed like 90 hours,” Ian stated. “If I used to be on tour, I am away and I’ve acquired nothing else to do, I am sitting in a resort room … on the websites for simply hour after hour after hour. It was a lot enjoyable.”
Typically, he’d even play in the course of concert events.
“I’d be in a Sunday event and I might be going deep … after which it is time for the band to go on stage, and I am like, what are we going to do? So I’d actually convey my laptop computer on stage, I might be up there enjoying (guitar and) my laptop computer can be proper over there on the aspect, wherever my guitar tech was arrange … After which I’d run again (and ask) what occurred (within the event).
“There have been really just a few instances the place he would get into palms and truly win a pot for me. And so if I cashed, I might money him out of the sport, too.”
Ian was flying excessive. He performed in residence video games with A-list celebrities like Steve Martin and was poised to increase his Final Guess sponsorship. However an notorious day that might endlessly develop into recognized to poker gamers as “Black Friday” was simply across the nook.
Keep tuned for Half 2 of metallic legend Scott Ian’s four-year run as a sponsored poker professional.
Connor Richards
Senior Editor U.S.
