Eric “Rizen” Lynch is an average looking guy. He lives in St. Louis, Missouri with his wife and kids, he is neither a college dropout nor a hustler by trade.
He’s a normal guy who happens to make millions of dollars playing poker online.
After graduating from college in 2000, Eric Lynch set out to follow a relatively safe career path as an IT professional. As a man with his finger on the pulse of the computer world, Lynch has been a longtime member of the online gaming community under his now famous screen name, “Rizen.”
In May of 2006, the then still IT professional, Lynch won the PokerStars Million Dollar Guaranteed Tournament for a more than $200,000 payday. This launched Rizen into the professional poker world and he has not looked back since.
He has already found substantial success in the live tournament scene in the forms of a 24th place finish in the 2006 World Series of Poker Main Event (good for a $494,797 check,) a 7th place finish in the 2007 $1,500 WSOP Pot Limit Hold’em, a 2nd place finish in the 2007 Pot Limit Omaha and 9 overall cashes in only 3 WSOPs entered into.
The bulk of Eric Lynch’s time is spent as his alter ego Rizen in high-stakes online games. Like most players, he began in Hold’em but over the recent months he has begun to head more into Omaha along with fellow online guru, Tom “Durrrr” Dwan.
Perhaps even more impressive than Rizen’s rapid assault of the live tournament poker scene is his rapid assault of the poker book scene. In early 2008, Lynch along with other online pros Jon “Pearljammer” Turner and Jon “Apestyles” Van Fleet released what is being referred to as only the first volume of Winning Poker Tournaments One Hand at a Time a poker strategy book.
This bodes well for the future of Eric “Rizen” Lynch as more often than not, the real money in poker lies not in the playing but in the presentation of the game.
Click here for Eric “Rizen” Lynch’s interview with Poker News Daily.
