Greg Raymer
If you’ve ever watched televised poker games, then you would probably see Greg Raymer sitting in front of one of the tables conducting a game. He is known for wearing huge holographic glasses while playing poker. He is also known by his nickname in the poker world, Fossilman, and he is named such because of his past. He used to collect fossils used as card protectors and sell them to various poker tables to make money, and to this day, he still uses a fossil as his card protector. His current position is a long way from the fossil-selling boy of the past though, as he is now one of the notable poker players in the industry.
He began playing poker in casinos in 1999, when he moved from his home in Missouri to Stonington, Connecticut. At the time he was a patent lawyer for Pfizer. His experience with poker goes back to his college days though, when he played “nickle-dime” poker with friends from college. He worked his way up to different amounts until he made his way to the Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut. The year after he began playing in Foxwoods, he made his debut in the professional live poker tournament scene by joining the World Poker Finals. He made it all the way to third place, taking home $48,960. The win that made him famous came several tournaments and four years later, when he joined the 35th Annual World Series of Poker in 2004. He won the tournament, bagging the $5 million cash prize for their No-Limit Hold’em Championship. Throughout his career so far as a professional poker player, he has won one WSOP bracelet, he has had three first-place finishes and twenty-five money wins, and he has one of the highest bankrolls a person can make in just a few years in the industry – over $6.6 million in cash prizes from different tournaments, majority of which came from the WSOP tournaments he participates in every year. This is one player you should be scared of, no matter how goofy his glasses may be.