Todd Witteles: Difference between revisions

Todd Witteles is an American professional poker player. A former computer scientist, Witteles made poker his full-time pursuit in 2003.

Primarily a cash game player, Witteles entered his first tournament at the 2005 World Series of Poker, where he played the $1500 Limit Texas hold 'em event. He finished in third place out of a field of 1,049 entrants, with the final table being shown on ESPN. He took home nearly $116,000 after getting knocked out of the tournament by 21-year-old Eric Froehlich. As a gimmick, Witteles used a small Head & Shoulders bottle to protect his cards while playing, in reference to his online moniker "Dan Druff."

Nearly a month later, Witteles entered his second tournament, again at the World Series of Poker. This time he played the $3,000 Limit Hold 'em event, and bested his previous tournament by finishing first, earning a World Series of Poker gold bracelet and $347,385. Witteles set a World Series of Poker record, as no other player in history has finished better in their first two events.^[1] He was also named CardPlayer Magazine's 2005 World Series of Poker Player of the Year.^[2]

Witteles picked up his next major cash by finishing 4th at the Caribbean Poker Classic on the island of St. Kitts, in December, 2005. He won $87,000 for that effort, and it was his first appearance at a final table of a major No Limit Hold 'Em event.

While not duplicating his 2005 success, Witteles had a number of deep runs in subsequent years. He finished 10th place or better in at least one World Series event from 2005 through 2008. Seven of his twelve World Series cashes have been 19th place or better.

Witteles missed part of the 2010 World Series due to illness, but recovered in time for the Main Event, where he achieved his first-ever deep run. Despite sitting with below-average chips for the vast majority of the event, he finished 88th out of 7,319 entrants, good for a cash of $79,806.

In March, 2008, Todd was selected among eight other top online poker players to participate in ESPN's "Online Poker Think Tank."^[3]

Todd was a victim of the Absolute Poker/Ultimatebet "Superuser" cheating scandal. He and several other online players took part in uncovering and proving the cheating. This attracted enough media attention to where it became the subject of a story on the TV news program "60 Minutes", where Witteles was featured. The episode aired on November 30, 2008.^[4] Witteles appeared on the front page of The Washington Post about the same matter.^[5] On December 16, 2009, he appeared on CNBC to discuss the cheating. In the CNBC special, Witteles claimed that legalization and regulation of online poker was necessary in order to prevent future cheating scandals.

In June 2009, Todd was a guest broadcaster on ESPN360 for the televised 2009 World Series of Poker $10,000 Limit Holdem event.

Witteles is a former part-owner of the neverwinpoker.com poker forum, where he regularly participated and hosted two internet radio programs. In November of 2009, Witteles left neverwinpoker along with site founder Bryan Micon. The two started a new site called donkdown.com,^[6] and took the previous site's message board and radio show along with them.

As of 2010, his total live tournament winnings exceed $800,000.^[7] His 12 cashes at the WSOP account for $654,553 of those winnings.^[8]