Daniel Weinman Turns The Page On His Pro Poker Career

Daniel Weinman’s pro poker story was as improbable as it was incredible, with two World Poker Tour wins, a WSOP Circuit ring, and two World Series of Poker bracelets, including the 2023 main event title.

In fact, Weinman had already achieved prominent status in gambling circles long before he took center stage to bank a cool $12.1 million; in part because of his creation of the ‘Fantasyland’ concept for open-face Chinese poker, while also being a scratch golfer that had no problem taking on anyone and smiling ear-to-ear as he collected their money.

But at just 37 years old, he’s ready to write a new chapter. He’s ready for his legacy to expand beyond being the former champion of the biggest tournament in poker. He’s ready to bring millions of new players into the game he lives and breathes.

A New Chapter

Weinman followed the best year of his career with the best year of his personal life in 2024. Within months of winning life-changing money, he got married, bought a house, and just recently had his first child.

“I’ve always had this feeling that I never wanted to play poker forever,” Weinman admitted. “I wanted to settle down, have a family. I always struggled with that while playing poker.”

“My home base was Atlanta, but I lived out of a suitcase,” said the Georgia Tech grad. “You know, I had relationships that failed mostly because I was always on the road. It’s hard to make time for a relationship if you’re really in this world full time.”

“We got engaged, married, and pregnant in 2024 – so that was a lot,” said Sarah Weinman. “Daniel stepped back from poker a little bit, which has been interesting for us to navigate. It’s been a fun ride and I try to be supportive.”

By any measure, Mrs. World Champ jumped into the deep end of the poker world without any idea of what to expect.

“The first trip I did out there I walked into the big room and I saw so many butt cracks and half naked guys getting massages,” she laughed. “I was like, ‘Why would you want to be around this?’ But I have a different opinion now after being involved. This world is eye-opening.”

Playing For Beer Money

I caught up with Weinman on just the second game of poker he played in 2025 – a suburban Atlanta bar league. We were seated at the most technologically advanced poker table in development, while we played for bar tab money.

Weinman, along with Maanit and Manish Madan, is also one of the founders of RF Poker – a high-tech poker table company that’s looking to change the game. His win in 2023 coincided with the tech start-up, as he was writing code between trips to Las Vegas.

RF Poker uses RFID (radio-frequency identification) cards and chips to enhance the live poker experience.

“The reason that poker is slowly dying is we’re not getting new players,” Weinman said. “Gambling is kind of the number one barrier of entry that turns people away. I probably sound hypocritical about wanting to remove gambling from the game. Poker is such a great game and it’s been played with money forever; gambling is part of it, but we’re looking at a Top Golf concept. We have a private room for your group, a professional dealer, and an enhanced, social experience.”

The tables are sleek with separate sensors to read cards and chips, a lighting system that changes with the action and are completely customizable. They have a few in use in Texas and are actively showcasing their technology for major poker tours.

Weinman first saw Manit on Joe Ingram’s podcast discussing the Robbi Jade Lew/Garrett Adelstein cheating controversy as a security expert.

“He had been building security features for tables, and had a prototype in his basement,” Weinman recalled. “It was a perfect fit because I was kind of getting out of playing poker full-time and wanted to do some sort of programming. I thought, ‘what better than a poker company?”’

“It didn’t really feel like work,” he admitted. “So many people, me included, got into poker because we didn’t want a boss or a 9-5 job. But ask anyone that’s been playing for a living, everything becomes a grind. You’re a slave to tournament schedules or when cash games run. The ultimate freedom you thought you once had, you don’t really have anymore.”

Weinman has become completely at ease without competitive poker, and the vibe wears him like a suit.

“So, it was the opposite for me, where I went from playing poker for a living to sitting at a desk writing code.”

Back at the bar tournament, Daniel and Sarah played next to each other wearing goofy grins as one of poker’s finest pure players was getting check-raised by patrons eating wings at the table. A lot of the players knew Weinman and his résumé, but others had no idea because he gets embarrassed by his notoriety and will never toot his own horn.

It was probably for the best, as Daniel was the first to be eliminated. He didn’t even make the first break. Sarah later found pocket aces, and was unfortunate to run into my suited A-K. There was a king on the flop, then runner-runner clubs and House Weinman’s chips became mine.

They shook hands with everybody, chatted about the league’s monthly leaderboard invitational event and tipped the server before they left. It’s been a while since we counted on poker’s main event champion to be an ambassador for the game, as some over the years have shunned the spotlight while others gave it the middle finger. But here was the champ, on a Tuesday night, playing free bar league poker, planting the seeds for another boom.

Giving Players A Reason To Show Up

Weinman didn’t study hold’em charts, didn’t study GTO (game theory optimal) play, and relied on his innate poker sense at the table.

“I was never someone who worked really hard at poker, it came naturally to me,” he said. “I came up playing online in an era where you didn’t have to be very good to make money.”

“I think one of my biggest assets is that I’ve never had a big ego. I don’t need to play the highest stakes. I don’t need to go battle at Triton events because I know those guys are better than me. If poker is your job, then you have to put yourself in good spots to win.”

Weinman is a lifetime learner from the game and when designing an efficient RFID streaming table, he wanted to fold in a teaching element. A large part of RF Poker’s market is for inexperienced, social players, and the app allows players to review their games with proprietary software.

“I think it can attract new players to the game,” he said. “We bring people in, track and analyze their play. It’s not from a GTO perspective. We’ll never show you a chart, but we’ll show you that this player was aggressive and maybe you should have called him more.”

“When I came up it was just poker, but there are so many things to gamble on now. It’s the same quarter million people that poker is recycling. If RF Poker’s market ends up just being poker players, then we’ve completely failed.”

Weinman got proof of concept when he had his wife invite all of her friends for a night out to play. Selfishly, he might hope to convert all these people into real money players, but if he can get 10 million people that have never played poker before an experience they won’t forget, that makes an impression.

“One of my favorite parts about poker is when someone new comes in first place or they get to show a bluff,” Weinman said. “Poker is 95% men, and there’s no reason that we shouldn’t be attracting women and younger people into the game. That’s what we’re trying to do here.”

Compare and contrast Weinman’s emotional rollercoaster during his main event coverage with that of Jonathan Tamayo’s solver-based win in 2024 that prominently featured a laptop on the rail.

“I don’t think I ever stood up [from the table] besides running to my rail for all ins,” Weinman recalled. “The laptop on the rail was weird, but it showed what direction poker is going in. Here’s some guys playing for the most money ever and they’re looking at what a computer says to do rather than be in the moment.”

Pulling A Hellmuth

Weinman expects that 2025 will probably be a blank year on his Card Player profile.

“I think Team Lucky (Weinman, Shaun Deeb, Matt Glantz, and Josh Arieh) is going to be without me this year,” he revealed. “I used to play the entire summer, Sarah and Shaun famously convinced me to return in 2023 to play the main. I only played the opening and main events in 2024.”

The formation of Team Lucky had a tremendous impact on all of their results. Weinman shipped the main, Glantz pulled a $1 million bounty, and both Arieh and Deeb won their sixth bracelets while competing for Player of the Year honors.

“It’s huge to have top-level players who see the game from a different perspective,” said Weinman. “We’re similar where we’re not chart guys – Glantz is playing a $2,000 average buy-in in Florida, Josh is playing PLO and mixed games, and Shaun is playing everything under the sun.

“We bounce ideas off each other to see what’s working and what’s changing in the game. A fly on the wall would think we hate each other, think all other people suck, but that’s just the nature of who we are – we like needling each other.”

“We give Josh the most crap because he’s a smart player, but does some things that are unexplainable,” Weinman added. “He has to be the luckiest player in the world to be where is. Shaun makes fun of us for what we’re doing, but he’s in for 15 bullets every tournament he plays.”

From a pure poker perspective, what would one learn from the group?

“Not a ton,” he laughed. “But you’ll grow thick skin.”

Playing as the reigning main event champion didn’t stress him out, and he was able to secure a min-cash last summer.

“I almost think it’s easier. People want the story when you’re playing against them, so they’re doing wild things, giving me wild calls, and going for wild bluffs. I didn’t have to do anything special; my normal game became so much more profitable. I felt that I was getting called a lot more, so naturally, I stopped bluffing so much.”

But despite the advantage of being a former champ, much like Phil Hellmuth, Weinman will be skipping this summer’s main event.

“I’d love to go and play the main, but I don’t think Sarah’s going to be too happy if she’s at home with an infant and I’m not.”

No Time For Life While Grinding

In the last couple of months, he’s found himself missing the game from time to time.

“The problem I had with poker and the reason I took a step back was that I was traveling to stops, spending all this money on hotels and within an orbit of sitting down, I’d be ready to [leave].”

“I never wanted to be the 60- or 70-year-old guy grinding in a casino to make a living,” Weinman said. “As much as I like poker, I never wanted it to be a job anywhere near as long as it ended up being.”

“If I’m this miserable playing poker, let’s do something else for a while. Occasionally, I find myself missing it a bit and think I want to go back because I know I can make a lot of money. I can continue that career, but I’m enjoying the other things more now.”

• Photos by PokerGO, Card Player