Zachary Clark Bio

Splashing onto the poker scene in a big way in late August 2008 was Zach "CrazyZachary" Clark. The young poker pro from the Bay Area took the 2008 WPT Legends of Poker tournament by storm and played all the way to a third-place finish, good for $281,645.

Clark gravitated to poker because of a major influence in his life, his late uncle Chip Reese. "I did a lot of 'investing' with Chip growing up," said Clark. "We'd bet baseball all the time. Chip staked me in the 2008 WSOP. Then I won the FTOPS [Full Tilt Online Poker Series] main event right after that. He wasn't big on staking people, but I don't think he had a choice seeing that I was his nephew. [Laughing] At least I made him a little money."

A natural gambler, Clark took advantage of some loose California gaming restrictions to run a mini-casino from his home. "When I was in high school, I ran a little casino out of my house," recalled Clark. "We had blackjack and craps. We were legitimate. We had a six-deck shoe and everything. We had the poker table in the corner, with no rake of course. But yeah, that's pretty much how it started."

Clark did his best to talk his childhood friends into trying poker, most notably Marco "CrazyMarco" Johnson. Although Johnson had a much easier time making the switch to tournament poker. "We both grew up playing limit hold'em, and he made the transition to tournaments much easier than I did. He was so naturally aggressive to begin with, and I had to be pushed. [Dan] Harrington explains it perfectly: During the last two minutes of a football game, you can't be handing the ball off when you're down big, you have to throw the bomb. My limit hold'em style just didn't naturally carry over as fast as I'd have liked. It took about a year for me to get aggressive enough for me to become plus-EV [expected value] in these tournaments."

When asked what Reese would think of him making the final table of a major televised poker tournament, Clark shrugged off the notion that he was in some way following in his uncle's footsteps. "I think he'd be proud either way," explained Clark. "I mean, I love being here, and I'm going to make the most of it, but it's not for Chip. I think about Chip every day, and I miss him to death, but this is for me, and I have no doubt that he would agree with that."