Where Are They Now? 2009 WSOP 6th-Place Finisher Steve Begleiter

Chad Holloway

Level 15 : 3,000/6,000, 6,000 ante

Thirteen years ago, the World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event went on just its second-ever November Nine hiatus. When they did, Steve Begleiter sat third in chips behind Darvin Moon and Eric Buchman, but ahead of other players like Jeff Shulman, Phil Ivey, and eventual champ Joe Cada.

Begleiter, who was in action today here on Day 3 of the 2022 Wynn Millions, wound up finishing in sixth place for $1,587,160, which was his first-ever documented tournament cash on the Hendon Mob. Since then, he’s only added two other scores, one in August 2009 and the other in June 2016 when he finished 428th for $3,862 in the WSOP Event #41: $1,500 Monster Stack.

So, whatever happened to the former head of corporate strategy at Bear Stearns and married father of three?

“I’m not a professional. I started maybe in 2007. I played the Main Event in 2008, and between 2008-09 I put a lot of time into the game,” Begleiter recently told PokerNews. “Obviously in 2009, I caught lightning in a bottle. Very little bad stuff had happened to me. I hadn’t had that many two outers, or four hours with no cards. I probably played the Main Event the next five or six years, and I busted myself once or twice, but basically, all those bad things I thought only happened to other people happened to me.”

He continued: “There were no results to show for it. Then life sort of got in the way – aging parents, work, stuff like that. I stopped going for a few years and really just limited my poker to friends in the community that I live in. This year I turn 60 and the present my wife is giving me is I can play as many poker tournaments as I can fit into my schedule.”

Few players had as big a rail as Begleiter did back in 2009. Not only was his wife, Karen, in attendance, and his three children – Joshua, Caroline, and Aaron – waiting in the hall (they weren’t old enough at the time to enter the gaming area), but he also had over a hundred friends and family in the crowd.

“It was one of the thrills of a lifetime,” he recalled fondly. “If you remember, I had won my stake in a local tournament, so I had 20 partners. I had a 100 friends and family out there. It was just a great shared experience and I’m still friends with many of those people today. Looking back, it was a really, really fun time.”

Unfortunately Begleiter's return to poker did not result in another big final table appearance as he was eliminated from the 2022 Wynn Millions before the money.