Henry Orenstein

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Henry Orenstein

Hometown	Verona, New Jersey
World Series of Poker
Bracelet(s)	1
Money finishes	3
Highest ITM main event finish	8th, 1995

For Canadian artist, see Henry Orenstein.

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Henry Orenstein (born as Henryk Orenstein circa 1925, Hrubieszów, Poland^[1]) is a poker player and entrepreneur who resides in the US. He won the $5,000 Seven-card stud tournament at the 1996 World Series of Poker (WSOP), earning $130,000 by beating out (at the final table) such luminaries as fourth-place T. J. Cloutier, third-place Cyndy Violette, and runner-up Humberto Brenes. He twice had finished in the money in the $10,000 WSOP no limit hold'em main event: 12th in 1993 and 8th in 1995.

He came in 7th in the $2,500 Seven Card Stud event at the 2005 United States Poker Championship, and despite being the oldest competitor (at age 80) and a huge long-shot, won his first round of NBC's National Heads-Up Poker Championship against one of the best cash-game players in the world, Chip Reese. Orenstein would lose in the second round to John "World" Hennigan. He resides in Verona, New Jersey.

Orenstein is successful outside of his poker playing, both in poker and other pursuits. A Holocaust survivor who spent much of the end of World War II in various concentration camps, Orenstein became a toymaker who, decades later, convinced Hasbro to start producing Transformers. He holds over 100 other patents, and aside from Transformers, the best-known of these inventions is U.S. Patent 5,451,054 which gave Orenstein the exclusive right in the United States to detect and display hole cards in poker games. The ability to show a player's hidden cards to an audience is one of the principal reasons that poker is so popular today.

Continuing his poker career away from the cards, Orenstein is the creator and an executive producer of the Poker Superstars Invitational Tournament on FSN. In addition, Orenstein is a noted philanthropist, giving money to many causes, especially those related to Judaism. Both inside and outside the poker world, Orenstein is known as extremely kind and forward-thinking.

Orenstein produces the popular TV Show High Stakes Poker, which can be seen in the United States on GSN. ^[2]