Brian Rast

Brian Rast (born November 8, 1981) is a professional poker player from Las Vegas, Nevada who won the 2011 World Series of Poker $1,500 Pot Limit Hold'em event and the $50,000 Player's Championship.

Rast was born in Denver, Colorado but raised in Poway, California, where he graduated as valedictorian from Poway High School in 2000. He attended Stanford University before dropping out in order to pursue a career as a full-time poker professional. He began playing poker in 2003 after being inspired by John Dahl's 1998 film Rounders.^[1][2]

Online poker

Online, Rast is known as tsarrast on both Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars. Some of his online tournament results include finishing 3rd in PokerStars Sunday Million for $73,490^[3] and 3rd in Full Tilt Poker's FTOPS III Main Event for $114,203.50.^[2][4]

Rast is one of the pros from the online poker training site Poker VT^[1] and he is also a Victory Poker Pro Team member.^[5][6]

World Series of Poker

Rast has two World Series of Poker bracelets, both of them he won at the 2011 World Series of Poker. His first was in the $1,500 Pot-Limit Hold'em event where he earned $227,232 after he defeated poker professional Allen Kessler heads-up,^[7]

His second was in the $50,000 Player's Championship, the highest buy-in event that awards second highest prize money of $1,720,328 (behind the Main Event), also award is the David "Chip" Reese memorial trophy and what was described by Andrew Feldman of ESPN as "the most prestigious bracelet of the Series".^[8] The Player's Championship started out with a field of 128 players and after four days of play in a mixed game format known as 8-Game, the format was switch to No-Limit Texas Hold'em on the fifth day when the final table of eight was set with following noted poker professionals and where they finished: Ben Lamb (8th), Scott Seiver (7th), PokerStars Pro and SuperNova Elite George Lind (6th), Matt Glantz (5th), Owais Ahmed (4th) and Minh Ly (3rd).

When heads-up play began, Rast was up against 11-time bracelet winner Phil Hellmuth, who was trying to capture his 12th bracelet in his third heads-up match of the 2011 series. As the match progressed, Hellmuth established a 5-1 chip lead on Rast; however, Rast gained the lead after a series of draws that failed to improve Hellmuth's hands. Rast captured the bracelet when Hellmuth's flush draw failed to improve against Rast's King high straight.^[9]

His other results at the WSOP include a 9th place finish in the 2008 WSOP $5,000 Pot-Limit Omaha with Rebuys event for $84,863, 14th at the 2009 WSOP in the $40,000 No-Limit Hold'em event for $128,665 and at the 2010 WSOP he finished in the money, coming in 537th place out of 7,319 player for $24,079.^[10]

At the 2012 WSOP Rast made two final tables sixth place in the $1,500 No Limit Hold'em Re-entry for $137,632 and sixth place in the $1,000,000 Big One for One Drop for $1,621,333.

Other poker tournament and cash games

At the World Poker Tour (WPT) Rast finished 7th place at the $25,000 WPT Championship Event earning $204,275.^[10]

As of 2012, his total live tournament winnings exceed $4,400,000.^[11]

World Series of Poker bracelets

Notes

External links

• PocketFives profile
• Bluff Magazine profile
• TwoPlusTwo PokerCast Interview of Brian Rast
• The PokerStars.net Big Game profile