Ted Forrest’s fans claim he is not only one of the best poker players in the world, but one of the nicest as well, and he is highly respected by his peers because of his manners and poise. One of his biographers, Michael Craig, writes about buying a car with Ted: when asked what he was looking for, Ted replied, “Good AC.” This from a man who has won 5 WSOP gold bracelets.
Ted Forrest started working at age 20 at a hotel near the Grand Canyon and making sporadic trips to Vegas to play poker, where he made enough money to put himself through school at Lemoine College, where his father had been a teacher. He dropped out with only 9 credits to go, a decision he still stands by to date: “If I’d graduated from college, I might have taken some job making $36,000 a year. I’m happy with the alternative route I’ve taken.”
It was a good choice indeed, as Ted Forrest now has over $5,400,000 in live tournament winnings alone. Although he is acknowledged as a stud master, he is also a force to be reckoned in Hold’em tables, bagging a Hold’em bracelet in 2004.
A curious fact about his 5 bracelets is that 3 of them were stolen; he gave one of the remaining ones to his daughter and currently keeps one locked in a safe place. He also bought one extra WSOP golden bracelet from Hamid Dastmalchi for three $500 chips.
Ted Forrest is well known for his outrageous prop bets. The successful ones are more publicized, such as winning $10,000 for making a standing back flip during a WSOP, and making $7,000 for completing a marathon. But there have also been unsuccessful ones, like betting $10,000 that he could bench press 225 lbs. fifty times in 24 hours (besides losing the money he permanently injured his right arm) and betting $60,000 that Mark Weisman couldn’t run a mile in under six minutes (he could.) Forrest also plays craps, where he has lost and won up to a million dollars in one session.
Ted Forrest has made enough money to back up other poker players, another reason why his peers respect and like him, and he is regarded as the “business man of poker” because he has backed up more players than anyone else.
Ted Forrest’s game analysis (by Barry Greenstein):
- Aggressiveness: 7
- Looseness: 8
- Short-handed: 8
- Limit: 8
- No-limit: 8
- Tournaments: 7
- Side games: 7
- Steam control: 6
- Against weak players: 8
- Against strong players: 7
