Things you might not know:
- Alaei didn't care for school much growing up and collected baseball and basketball cards, eventually running a highly successful sports card business with his father. The family moved closer to L.A. to take advantage of the better market for their collected cards.
- Alaei once sold a mint Tiger Woods card for $72,000 while in high school.
- Alaei barely attended high school, and ended up being home schooled for 11th and 12th grade so he could graduate.
- Alaei started playing poker in his late teens, working his way up the cash game ladder steadily.
- Alaei's first tournament success came in 2003 on a San Francisco trip where he finished 18th.
- Alaei's first victory came the next year in a 2004 Legends of Poker preliminary event.
- Alaei moved to San Francisco to play cash games with the likes of Antonio Esfandiari, Phil Laak, Gabe Thaler and Michael Binger.
- After some success at the 2005 Five Star World Poker Classic at the Bellagio, Alaei moved into the Bellagio playing cash games every day and remained for nearly a year.
- Alaei appeared on several seasons of High Stakes Poker with the likes of Daniel Negreanu, Doyle Brunson, Sam Farha and Phil Ivey.
- Alaei played on PokerStars Big Game with Barry Greenstein, Jason Mercier and others.
- final table of the $50,000 Players Championship, finishing in seventh for $221,105.
Daniel Alaei, known as "steamraise" on PokerStars and "fakesky" on Full Tilt is a regular in the high stakes online games. He has always been a quiet and humble player. He has commented that he wished all young online wizards should have to take a class in poker etiquette before entering the world of live high stakes poker.
Alaei vids include a video interview after his latest WSOP win, Big Game clip, and some background and strategy discussion:
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