About Me

Family, Denver Broncos, Los Angeles Kings, Carlsbad, Charleston, Golf, Travel, Interwebz, Mexican Food, Beach, Games, Music, Poker, History, Biographies, The Howards: Hughes and Stern, good quality Donuts.

Where am I: Carlsbad mostly, but Charleston is always a possibility.  West Ashley, yo.

What do I do:  Most people find my work life interesting. With that in mind, here’s a summary:

Entered the music business out of college as an A&R scout for Atlantic Records.  Spent about 18 months there, and was part of the A&R team responsible for discovering Stone Temple Pilots.  Left Atlantic to be part of the management team for STP, and did that for four years, covering the first three albums of the bands career.  Left STP to be the President of an Atlantic subsidiary label founded by myself and the members of Hootie& the Blowfish.

Napster and other factors had changed the record business, and so when things started to slow down in the early 2000s, I started playing a lot of poker.  This led to co-founding PokerNews.com with Tony G.  I was the CEO for the first two years, helping scale growth from a three person operation, to nearly 70 upon my departure.  My duties ran the gamut of the entire business, encompassing everything from managing the affiliate relationships to starting, building and managing the 28 subdomain language portals, to writing most of the articles on the site.  The only thing I did not do was code, though I did oversee the CTO.

As the business grew, we expanded and hired, allowing me to segue to running the overall business as a whole.  When UIGEA hit, we changed my titled to ‘Editor In Chief’, as I was based in the US.

As the business grew, we continued to scale, and I did things like the deal with Caesars for exclusive coverage rights to the WSOP.  This deal had a fundamental impact on the scale of the business that continues to this day.

I sold my piece of the business in 2009, and a few weeks later, the phone rang, and it was PokerStars…

I joined PokerStars in late 2009 as a member of the Exec team, based in London, and reporting directly to MarkScheinberg.  I was on the Senior Leadership Team, comprised of the top 20 or so execs at the company.  This team participated in most of the issues facing the company, save banking and technical. My initial focus was to fix the pro poker endorser and celebrity roster, which had become bloated and unwieldy.

After my year longsentence commitment in London, I moved back to California post Black Friday.  My focus shifted a bit.  While continuing to manage the celebrity and pro functions, I also became the ‘poker guy’ for the TV production unit.

I am currently working as a gaming consultant on a project by project basis.