Poker Players Where Are They Now

At the start of the last decade, few players had as much success as Sam Stein. In 2010, he broke out with more than $900K in live tournament winnings, and the following year enjoyed a career-year with $2,151,460 in winnings. He proceeded to notch six-figure years from 2012-16, but ever since then, he's largely disappeared from the poker spotlight. Our #1 selling poker application for 5+ years running. Leak Buster has helped tens of thousands of online poker players improve their poker games, and simplified their database review. Leak Buster is a unique poker analysis software that has the power to locate your most costly online poker leaks in minutes! “There’s no excuse not to take a break right now,” he said. Neeme said that if poker players have been responsible in their profession, they should have cash reserves and be in a much better.

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In August 2009, a new unique reality show hit the screen and the whole poker community rejoiced. The TV show was truly entertaining presenting the life of four wizkids who could win and lose thousands of dollars in a matter of seconds just by clicking some buttons on a big display. Even though it was cheesy at times just to make it more appealing for the non-poker market, the show was genuine and not your average Keeping Up With The Kardashians.

The four protagonists weren’t big hotshots or social gurus, they were actually young men awkward and lacking social skills at times who happened to play poker at the highest stakes. Their goal? As the title clearly showed - 2 Months 2 Million, to make $2 million in two months just by playing poker while enjoying themselves in Las Vegas. What happened to the show though? And where are the four poker superstars now? Stick around, read the next lines and you will find out all there is to know about one of the most interesting TV poker reality shows ever.

The Show

2 Months 2 Million debuted on August 16, 2009 on G4TV, a defunct American TV channel that initially focused on the world of video games and later transitioned to the more general entertainment format. The show focused on four high-stakes online poker players at the time - Dani ‘Ansky’ Stern, Jay ‘KRANTZ’ Rosenkrantz, Brian ‘flawless_victory’ Roberts, Emil ‘whitelime’ Patel - and their luxurious mansion in Las Vegas.

According to Stern, Rosenkrantz came up with the idea of such a show back in 2006, when the poker boom was in full effect. Unfortunately it took three years for the idea to finally materialize, at a time when it was clear that poker was losing precious ground. In fact, Stern still believes that if the show had been aired in 2006 or 2007, it would have been a big hit.

Nevertheless, 2M2MM still was a big hit, at least for the poker community. Back then, many fans tried to make their own ‘War Room’. In 2 Months 2 Million, the War Room was basically the office of the four where they grinded online with countless big wide monitors and state-of-the-art (at that time) PC hardware. Many also enjoyed the challenges and the prop bets the four made during the filming. Unfortunately, the TV poker show didn’t had a long life and wasn’t much of a success outside the poker circles. Roberts later blame the network for being ‘incredible cheap’ and ‘scared to death of doing original programming that actually cost something.’

Only 10 half-an-hour episodes were shot and after the first season, G4TV didn’t renew the contracts with the four poker wizkids. In a later interview, Stern said that he wished 2M2MM would have been more of a documentary than a reality show where he would go and smash watermelons after a bad day at the office.

The crew tried to find another TV network to continue filming but nobody seemed interested. G4TV ceased to air on December 31, 2014 but not before giving 2M2MM one more shot: in September 2014, the archived episodes were rebroadcasted one last time on TV.

How Much Did They Actually Win?

In the end, the four poker players were far away from the $2 million goal. They still won $676,700 though grinding long hours in the War Room. They started off well and after just two episodes, they were up $200,000 before falling off to just $35,000 after five episodes.

In order to reach the goal, they tried different things including organizing a boot camp at their Las Vegas mansion and a high-stakes homegame that featured Bertrand Grospellier, David Williams, Andrew Lichtenberger, and Andrew Robl. Since the $2 million goal was truly unreachable, in the final episode, they changed the goal to $1 million but to no avail.

Individually, Rosenkrantz won for the team $406,500, Patel cashed in $161,900, Stern added $100,800 while Roberts profited only $7,500.

The crew also organized a fundraiser benefiting the Lili Claire Foundation in one of the episodes.

Where Are They Now?

After the show and with the Black Friday hitting the poker market hard, the four online grinders took different paths but still remained very good friends. One of them even created yet another unique video concept called Bet Raise Fold. After that however, he left the game in the background and started new projects. The other three are still part of the poker scene in one form or another, even though they aren’t playing the highest stakes out there.

So who is who and where are they now?

Dani Stern

Dani ‘Ansky’ Stern is easily the most distinguishable name out of the four for most of the poker enthusiasts who don’t know much about the late 2000s. He became a very active voice in the poker community and a representative for all online poker grinders. Just several months ago, Stern was part of a pro team that met with Amaya following this year’s changes in the PokerStars’ VIP and rake structure.

Even after all these years, ‘Ansky’ remains a well-respected online poker player and a very good live tournament grinder. According to HendonMob DB, Stern has $2,733,206 in live tournament earnings. So far, he has three WSOP final tables, including a third-place finish at the 2013 WSOP $25,000 Six-Handed No Limit Holdem event.

Jay Rosenkrantz

After the 2M2MM project, Rosenkrantz had another great idea: helped by high-stakes companions, he started the production of a poker documentary late in 2010. In 2013, Bet Raise Fold: The Story of Online Poker was completed and became available to the wide audience. The documentary is about the online poker room starting with Chris Moneymaker WSOP win in 2003 and finishing with the notorious Black Friday of Poker.

Rosenkrantz also helped animation director John Wray in creating the funny TV poker show called The Micros. The project was put on hold after the Black Friday of Poker.

In 2011, ‘KRANTZ’ was accused of playing poker on multiple accounts but he denied it. Afterwards, he stopped grinding the high-stakes altogether and concentrated on other artistic projects like making Virtual Reality video games and writing books. Even so, under his Full Tilt screename ‘pr1nnyraid’, Rosenkrantz remains one of the top online cash winners all-time. According to HighStakesDB, he cashed in $2,456,218 prior to Black Friday mainly from the heads-up cash games.

In 2015, as a founding member of the poker training site Deuces Cracked, he was part of the selling party that sold DC to FourCubed LLC.

Brian Roberts

Roberts continued to excel at poker and grind the mid-stakes well after the 2 Months 2 Million project. He’s currently a coach at Ivey League mostly playing cash Pot Limit Omaha. He joined the Ivey League poker team in 2014.

Roberts didn’t settle for the online games, he made a smooth transition to the live play and was very close to win his first WSOP gold bracelet in 2011, at the WSOP Europe in Cannes where he finished fourth at the Main Event. As of late, he has been focusing on the live high rollers and super high rollers. Last year, the American was also very close to make yet another WSOP final table, this time in Las Vegas, at the PLO Championship event. Overall, he won $1,392,341 while playing live tournaments.

Emil Patel

The Finn is still playing poker for a living but after the 2M2MM, he is more an under-the-radar type of player. Yet, from time to time, his name reemerges spectacularly like in the last year’s SCOOP when he won a SCOOP title at the PLO 6-max $2,100 High Event cashing in almost $100,000.

Moreover, Patel continues to play live tournaments playing both No Limit Holdem and Pot Limit Omaha. He secured a side event title in 2014 at UKIPT London and was runner-up in this year’s PLO eight-handed side event at the PCA. Overall, he has $838,688 in live tournament earnings so far.

Besides poker, Patel is also a big pizza fan and blogger.

How do you feel about the 2M2MM TV show seven years after it was initially broadcasted? Was it a good show? Did you enjoy it? Do you a show similar to 2M2MM could be successful nowadays? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below.

Table Of Contents

At the start of the last decade, few players had as much success as Sam Stein.

In 2010, he broke out with more than $900K in live tournament winnings, and the following year enjoyed a career-year with $2,151,460 in winnings.

He proceeded to notch six-figure years from 2012-16, but ever since then, he's largely disappeared from the poker spotlight.

PokerNews recently reconnected with Stein, who began playing poker in 2003, to learn where he's been these past few years.

Starting a Family

Like so many players of his generation, Stein entered the world of fatherhood, which understandably impacted his poker schedule.

'About two years ago, I moved to Cincinnati to be near my wife Erin's family since we had a son, Ethan,' Stein told PokerNews. 'Our son turns two next month and that's pretty much what I've been up to lately. I still play a good amount of poker online especially during this quarantine.'

He continued: 'I've been playing online poker pretty much exclusively since the birth of our son. I would go through stretches of not playing much poker in order to spend as much time with my son as possible because I am one of those people whose life dream was to have kids and a family so I don't want to miss a milestone. It has brought me more joy than I could have ever imagined.'

On top of starting his own family, Stein had to deal with the loss of his father a year ago.

'The combination of those things and the freedom poker has given me has led me to be more content playing online for the time being,' said Stein.

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An Impressive Poker Résumé

Speaking of online play, Stein is no stranger to the virtual play. A decade ago he began tearing it up at all the major poker sites under the moniker 'KingKobeMVP.' That included winning the PokerStars Super Tuesday and Sunday 500 for high five-figure scores.

Speaking of his screenname, it was a well-known fact that Stein was a big fan of Kobe Bryant, who died in January in a highly-publicized helicopter crash.

'Kobe was always a larger than life person to me so of course when I started seeing the tweets I thought it was a hoax,' Stein said of his basketball idol. 'It hit me extra hard when I heard his daughter was on the helicopter especially having a child of my own now.

'It was just a horrific tragedy and he seemed to be doing some really great things with his life and family after his career was over. Going to Laker games in his rookie season as a little kid I fell in love right away, it was his work ethic that I admired most, he just always had that motto if I work harder than you I will beat you and I feel like that's a good motto to have in many areas of life especially poker.'

In the live realm, Stein has amassed more than $4.8 million in tournament winnings including a career-high $1 million for finishing fourth in the 2011 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure. That came a year after he finished second to Tom Marchese in the 2010 NAPT Deep Stack Extravaganza for $522,306.

In 2011, he won the World Series of Poker Event #31: $3,000 Pot-Limit Omaha for $420,802 and his only gold bracelet. He came close to a second three years later when he finished runner-up to Davide Suriano in the 2014 WSOP Event #40: $10,000 Heads-Up NLH Championship for $207,347.

Poker Players Where Are They Now Right Now

The Online Grind

For someone focused on online poker, current worldwide circumstances have resulted in an influx of players, which in turn have made the games juicy.

'Everyone wants something different in life, family is the only reason I ‘got out' of playing as much live as I used to, but I may get back to that soon.'

'We are getting along as well as we can with COVID-19 times,' he said. 'My wife is able to work from home and I watch our son during the day and play online poker at night.

I've been playing pretty much only pot-limit Omaha poker and no-limit Texas hold'em cash games online $10/$20 and higher.'

Speaking of time, Stein was asked whether or not he believed playing poker is a sustainable career in this day and age.

Poker Players Where Are They Now Videos

'I think poker is certainly still a sustainable option for a lot of people but it's much more competitive now,' he admitted.

'In order to have it be your main source of income you have to spend a lot of hours both studying and playing. Everyone wants something different in life, family is the only reason I 'got out' of playing as much live as I used to, but I may get back to that soon. It's just my preference for now. So, I wouldn't say you need to win some money and run from poker, it's really just about what makes you happiest.'

As for what's coming up for Stein, he and his wife are adding to the family.

Poker Players Where Are They Now Images

'We have our second child, another boy, due in August, so I'm sure I'll have my hands full with that,' he concluded. 'I still don't envision myself ever quitting poker or taking too long of breaks at a time because I know how quickly you can fall behind the curve and it can take a lot of work to get back.'

Poker Players Where Are They Now 2020

For more on Stein, follow him on Twitter @KingKobeMVP

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