Dusty Schmidt

A consummate “grinder,” Dusty “Leatherass” Schmidt has played nearly 9 million hands of online poker over his six-year career. He is the author of the recently released Don’t Listen To Phil Hellmuth: Correcting The 50 Worst Pieces of Poker Advice You’ve Ever Heard. In December 2009, Schmidt released his first book, Treat Your Poker Like A Business, which quickly became an international sensation. Today the book has been published in eight languages, with a sequel due later in 2011.

Schmidt is a lead instructor at DragTheBar.com. He is a columnist at Card Player and Baller magazines.

Schmidt has won almost $4 million during that period, and has never experienced a losing month. In 2007, he achieved PokerStars’ SuperNova Elite status in just eight months while playing high-stakes cash games exclusively. Schmidt posted the world’s highest win rate in both 5/10 NL and 10/20 NL in both 2007 and 2008. In a four-month period between Nov. 2007 and Feb. 2008, Schmidt won in excess of $600,000 in high-stakes cash games. He is now a highly respected instructor at DragTheBar.com, and plays as high as 25/50 NL.

As a young man, Schmidt was a top-ranked golfer. He broke two of Tiger Woods’ junior records, and was the leading money winner on the Golden States Tour when, at age 23, he suffered a career-ending heart attack. Schmidt returned to golf in 2009, winning medalist honors in qualifying for the Oregon Amateur Championship. Later that year, Schmidt famously represented himself in federal court in his suit against the United States Golf Association, which controversially stripped him of his amateur status, in part due to his poker profession.

Schmidt is also a successful entrepreneur. He is co-founder of Imagine Media, and the creator of 10thGreen.com, the first social network for golfers. His story has been featured in Sports Illustrated, Card Player, Poker News, Golf Magazine, Fairways and Greens, Golf Week,Golf World and the Portland Oregonian, as well as on ESPN, cnn.com, wallstreetjournal.com, forbes.com, fortune.com, espn.com, golfdigest.com and golf.com, among many others. He recently founded the House of Cards Project, a philanthropic effort to provide food and shelter to disadvantaged families. His life story will be told in the book Raise: The Impossibly True Tale of Dusty Schmidt, to be released later in 2011. He lives in Portland, Ore., with his wife, Nicole, and daughter, Lennon.