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The ascendance to poker excellence is a long, arduous, and usually costly process. We take our lumps, eventually triumph, move up in stakes, take more lumps, and the cycle repeats itself. We're like rats going for cheese in the mousetrap, except once we learn not to chase the chase, we go searching for more of it in bigger traps.
At some point, this all has to end. We eventually reach too many times and one of two things happens: The game busts us and we drive a metaphorical cab for a few months as we rebuild our bankrolls and start anew, or we continue to conquer and rise. It's the rare individual who continues the ascendance all the way to the top. It's rarer still that one takes his lumps once there, and then triumphs at the biggest games in the world.
Eli Elezra has done that, both in poker and in life. He’s survived mid-limits and wars, found new games and homes. With a constant, bright smile, the forty-seven-year-old businessman approaches new challenges, learns from the lumps he takes, and conquers all he surveys. What’s more impressive is that it’s to the benefi t of his surroundings that he does so.
Elezra was born in 1960, ten miles from Bethlehem in Israel. Israel was just entering its adolescence then, born twelve years earlier. His mother and father had immigrated there – his mother from Morocco, his father from Algeria — and were helping the young nation develop as a daycare worker and post offi ce worker respectively. Their example would be refl ected in their son’s travels and accomplishments.
Like so many other top poker players, Elezra’s path to the game led through another. “I love to play sports… basketball.” When he mentions the game, you can hear the smile in his voice. Elezra played the game professionally, earning a few dimes before Israel’s mandatory armed forces registration claimed him at eighteen.
Eli flourished in the army. While Israeli law insists on three years of service from every citizen, Eli did that one better. Rising to the rank of lieutenant, he spent a total of four years in the service. He was a member of the Golani Brigade, amongst the most decorated infantry units in the Israeli armed forces: “We were like the Green Berets.”
It was near the end of his service time that Eli fi rst encountered poker. Seeing action in the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the young Elezra was shot in the leg. The injury restricted him to bed for six months, and cards helped him pass the time. Still, they wouldn’t become a major part of his life until much later.
Once Eli’s time in the army was done, he spent three months in continental Europe, but he saw greener pastures on the other side of the world. “The shot in the leg woke me up,” he explained. “I’d heard about some good opportunities in America and decided it was time to go see for myself.”
At twenty-two, Eli made his way to another part of the world he could help develop. He landed in Kotzebue, Alaska, a small industrial town some thirty miles north of the Arctic Circle. The entrenchment that developed was deep enough to convince him to make America his home. For four years he worked in Alaska, first on the pipeline, then in the fisheries industry. “That got me stuck in America.”
It was at twenty-six that Elezra got a phone call that would change his life yet again. It came from his brother, telling Eli that Vegas was waiting for him. Another blooming community to nurture. Eli, who’d made his way from the Israeli desert to the Arctic tundra, was on his way back to the desert again. What he found was a town on the verge of an explosion.
It was in Vegas that Eli would fi nd his business chops. “We purchased a 60-minute photo shop right across from the Sands. We upgraded the technology, making it a 30-minute photo, and business took off. We eventually expanded it to be a convenience store… souvenirs, photos… we started opening more stores. Now we have thirty of them.” He’d arrived at the perfect time and had taken full advantage.
A success in business, Eli started a family. He and wife Hila would have fi ve kids: sons Jonathan, Guy, Sean and Ryan, and daughter Maya. Over the years, it’s his family that’s provided a stabilizing effect as he co-exists as businessman, family man, and poker player. “In this game, you see people who are one day on top of the world, the next day at the bottom with no way out. For me, poker comes third (to family and business), of course.”
It’s easy for him to say. Elezra is one of just three regular participants in “The Big Game” – along with Lyle Berman and Guy Laliberte — who doesn’t rely upon his winnings to pay the bills. He relies on business to pay the bills, while poker is his R&R. “I love the mind wars, my blood moving, the action, the bluffi ng.” He likes the winning too, probably more than most since he had to earn his money the hard way.
Eli began playing poker seriously in 1997 and quickly got hooked. “I started out playing smaller games…20/40, 40/80, losing at fi rst, then learning how to win. As my business grew, so did the stakes.” Soon, he was catching the attention of the biggest players in the world.
“I was playing at the Mirage and so was The Big Game, so that’s where I met Chip (Reese) and Doyle (Brunson). At fi rst, I think they were nice to me because they wanted to keep me in the game. I started playing with them more and more, three-way games, and I learned so much. I used to be the hunted, but not any more.”
As their respect for Elezra’s game grew, so too did their admiration. Within the last few years, there was a noticeable change in Eli’s relationships with the two Titans. Before his passing this past December, Reese would call Eli daily, using their pipeline to keep up to date on goings on in the game when he was absent.
The lessons from Brunson and Reese are what made Elezra the player he is today. “Poker is a game of patience. I don’t always have the patience you need to be successful at larger tables. I’m a shorthand specialist. Now, I can’t get a shorthand game anymore.” You can hear the pride in his voice as he says it. The shorthand mentality follows him to tournament play.
“If I make a final table, I make it with the chip lead. I’m not a grinder… I’m a gambler. I’ll make another fi nal table soon. When I do, you watch, I’ll have the chip lead.” It’s that all-or-nothing approach that’s been responsible for his biggest triumphs thus far.
The first of those came in 2004, when he won the World Poker Tour’s Mirage Poker Showdown. After that, he was an automatic invite to shows like High Stakes Poker and Poker Superstars, becoming a household name. It wasn’t until 2007, however, that he got what may have been the biggest win of his career.
“Everywhere I go now, when I travel or am at home, people see me and they recognize me and they ask me for a picture. It’s very nice. The thing is, though, when we start talking, they always ask me, ‘How many bracelets do you have?’” Having to answer that question over and again left Eli wanting in the worst way the bracelet he won this year. Despite the win netting him less than one-fi fth of the prize money he got for his WPT victory, he remains unsure which of the two titles made him happier. “It felt even better to win the bracelet than I thought it would. It was excellent.”
That feeling may have come from one particularly popular wager he had at this year’s World Series of Poker. One night, with drinks flowing at The Big Game, a number of its participants started getting a little boisterous when the topic of winning bracelets came up. “They were saying it was easy to win them, still. I think it’s harder now, with so many players from the internet, so I told them I would bet them they couldn’t do it.”
Eli placed a total of thirteen bets ranging in value from $25,000 to$50,000 with odds ranging from 7:2 to 5:1. He also got Barry Greenstein to give him 10:1 odds on $25,000 that he could win a bracelet himself. None of the thirteen won and he did. In total, those bets netted him over $750,000.
“We’re always betting, always prop betting.” He explains that the action in Bobby’s Room (home of The Big Game) is continuous, a way of life; so those particular wagers didn’t stand out at the time. When they forced the biggest names in poker to play more than they’d planned to at the World Series though, the media caught wind of the goings on. Eli’s winning of the collected wagers was celebrated as a triumph by one of the good guys in the game.
That reputation permeates to this day. When it comes time for The Big Game to gather, it’s Eli who makes the calls. “I’m the one with all the phone numbers,” he smiles. “So I’m the one who gets everyone together.” It’s a testament to his likeability that he can gather so many busy people at the push of a button, but that’s what he does. Nurturing yet again.
Israel, Alaska, Vegas, the Big Game… they’ve all needed guidance to grow from the Eli Elezras of the world. With his migration to each, they’ve fl ourished as Eli’s done the same. In family, in business, in poker, and in friendship, this is a man who has matured and excelled in whatever environment has surrounded him. That environment is poker now.
Gary Wise wrote about Eli’s wager while working with BLUFF’s team at the World Series of Poker. You can read more about the details at his website, www.wisehandpoker.com.
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