Player to Watch: Dan Fleyshman

Topics: Epic Poker League, Player to Watch, Dan Fleyshman

His face is familiar, as is his name, but you may not be able to place him right away. Dan Fleyshman has been around the poker scene for many years, though, and he was the name behind Victory Poker. What most people don’t know is how much experience - in business and in poker - Dan brings to the table.

Dan first started accumulating tournament wins in 2005 with an evening tournament at the Bellagio’s Festa al Lago IV. Other wins include events at the Bellagio as well as the CEO Poker Tournament, Dennis Phillips Chipleader Challenge, and Hard Rock Mega Stack Poker Showdown. More recently, he began poker more frequently and playing bigger buy-in events. He placed seventh at the 2010 WSOP Europe Main Event for more than £118,000, and in 2011, he final tabled the WSOP Europe €10,000 NLHE Mixed Event for more than €54,000. To date, he has pocketed $586,581 in a game he plays in his spare time.

I caught up with Dan at the third Epic Poker Pro/Am event in December, as he was attempting to win another seat into the Epic Poker Main Event. Dan won a seat into the 6-Max in August and finished 15th in that event, earning $43,190.

Jen: Tell me about some of your first experiences with poker.

Dan: I started playing when I was 18 at the Indian casinos in San Diego. But my parents both played a lot, and my mom’s sister and brother actually owned a cardroom in Tipton, California, which is a very small town. The card room had four tables. They were also dealers at the Bicycle Club, and my uncle was winning trophies from events like the Lowball Championship and the Deuce-to-Seven Championship. That got me excited to play at the Indian casinos when I was 18. When I turned 21, I started playing at Palomar in San Diego and went back and forth to Bellagio to play $25-$50 games. I used money I made from my business, so I was always the casual player who’d come in one weekend a month and play versus guys like Antonio Esfandiari and Phil Laak, and I was the business kid going nuts. I won a lot, actually, because I studied everything and read every book possible. I played a lot during the three years leading up to that point, and though the pros are much better players, my style worked really well against them. So I was winning very consistently in that game, and I continued to play year after year.

Jen: Was there a point that poker felt like more of a business to you than a leisure activity?

Dan: Poker, to me, is all leisure. It’s like my vacation; it’s my excuse to get away. There are business elements to is for sure, though, because I’ve met some great business people in the big stakes games, and the low stakes games allow me to create a buzz for whatever thing I’m working on, whether it’s been an energy drink or a charity.

Jen: Is that how Victory Poker came to be?

Dan: It was the reason I was able to start it so fast and aggressively. The people who invested in the company were comfortable with me and had known me at the tables for years, watching me build companies. I was able to get the third largest team of poker pros in the world based off the fact that they all saw me playing the big games and tournaments, and they felt comfortable with me. In November 2009, we came up with the concept - Antonio Esfandiari, Andrew Robl, and more. By February 1, I already had everything set up, and we were live in only three months.

Jen: How did Black Friday affect you and your company?

Dan: It was frustrating. Leading up to Black Friday, we had hit our first year’s numbers after only 10 weeks, we were crushing all of our expectations and getting tens of thousands of people to play and be a part of it. We had a lot of traffic despite not having near the money that PokerStars or Full Tilt did. But Black Friday hit, and it ripped our souls out. We built something great, everyone was watching, and we were having fun, but we had to stop. The government didn’t make us stop, but they were acting so recklessly that we weren’t sure if we could continue. We decided to wait and see what the government does before starting up again, so we shut down operations within four days. We’re in a holding pattern.

Jen: Poker also helps with your charitable efforts. Can you talk about how you combine the two?

Dan: I do charity poker tournaments every year. Now, I do them more often because Model Citizen Fund is my own charity. Even before, with the energy drink and the retail store and the online poker site, we always did charity poker tournaments. It’s a great tie-in because it raises money for charity, though I was always raising money for other people’s charities at that time. The people in the poker community are really happy to rebuy and donate. They’re they most charitable people I’ve known in any industry. When I started Model Citizen Fund, I did more tournaments - one here at the Palms and one with the WSOP Europe as the official charity event in Cannes. And I’m really going to continue to tie in the charity tournaments because it brings in players who are willing to donate sometimes thousands of dollars, and that adds up a few times a year.

Jen: What inspired you to start this particular charity?

Dan: I was raising money for other charities all the time and was never really sure where all the money went or how it was used. Did it make a true impact? If I donated $50,000 or so, what was the cause and effect? I also figured out that I couldn’t cure cancer or AIDS, so I wanted to create a charity that people could actually see, feel, and touch. So I made these backpacks that have 150 emergency supply items in them. It was cost effective because for $100, a backpack can be shipped anywhere in the country. It has $500 or $600 worth of items that you can hand to a homeless person or ship to a Hurricane Katrina incident or a homeless shelter, and it helps people start their lives over. Each backpack contains two or three weeks’ worth of food and drink, as well as cleaning supplies, hand sanitizers, a sleeping bag, poncho, nail clippers, and all kinds of things. There’s even a game set in there, sunglasses, earplugs to help them sleep at night … just simple things that they don’t have.

Jen: How many have you handed out to date?

Dan: We just started two months ago, and we’ve only done maybe 400 or 500 so far. Once we get some of the checks from the events we did, like the Kandy Kruise and nightclub events for five- and six-figure sums, those will generate thousands of backpacks for us at the beginning of the year. We don’t have any overhead because everyone that helps us works for other companies, so they don’t need a salary from the charity. When people donate $1,000, that’s exactly how much goes to buying backpacks. When we do these big events, I personally pay for the nightclubs, the glitz and glamour, and prizes for the winners. I want people to know that the charity has that true cause-and-effect that they can see.

Jen: What other businesses are you involved in?

Dan: I’m starting a $100 million investment fund called Relationship Capital with offices in Newport Beach, and I just finished the crazy amounts of legal paperwork for that. I’m building a 24-hour food court in front of Panorama Towers in Las Vegas, with six restaurants, including Mexican, sushi, American, cookie/coffee/cupcakes/smoothies, and an organic salad bar. It’ll be in front of Panorama for the 36,000 cars that pass by on the street and the 1,015 residents that always want food and drink. There are 61 poker players in the building that spend a lot of money and don’t want to leave. Since Black Friday, I started working on the lease and it’s moving along.

Jen: Back to poker for a moment, your tournament results have been better the last few years. To what do you attribute the success?

Dan: I only played three to five events per year from 2005 to 2009 because I mostly played cash games and worked. Recently, though, I won that Epic Poker seat at the Palms, and I won the tournament at the Hard Rock, and I really liked winning. (He smiled.) I really liked the tournament action, and the cash games became less important since it didn’t matter whether I won $10K or $50K; it didn’t change much for me, and it took a longer time to play. Business is always number one for me, so I found that tournaments were more of a vacation, especially with locations like WSOP Europe. I’ve been studying with Joe Navarro and taking the game more seriously, asking questions of the pros about how I play my hands. I’m still only playing maybe eight to 10 events a year, but I’m final tabling two or three. I’d like to win something really big.