Born in New York City, Isaac Haxton was raised in Syracuse where his father was an English professor. From a very young age, it was obvious that Isaac was an extremely bright child. He was playing chess by age 4, and soon took up playing card game Magic: The Gathering. He was introduced to poker by his fellow magic players and, by the time he was 18, he was frequenting the $3/6 Limit Hold’em games at the Turning stone Casino.
Following his success in brick-and-mortar poker rooms, Haxton decided to enter the online world and was immediately hooked. After completing two years of his Computer Science major at Brown University – all the while playing 20-plus hours of poker per week – he decided to take a year off from school to give poker his full attention.
Haxton’s decision paid off immediately as in early 2007 he took second place in the World Poker Tour PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, winning $861K. After the initial elation of receiving such a large sum of money, Isaac was shocked to discover that NETeller – the online bank that was holding his money – was being investigated and over $55 million of their funds had been seized. Essentially, he had $800K in virtual limbo with no way of knowing what was going to happen. During this bittersweet period of waiting, he became known as ‘the guy with $800K stuck in NETeller’.
Luckily for Haxton and the rest of the poker community, NETeller’s funds were eventually released and he received his money. At the 2007 World Series of Poker, he cashed in three events, and followed that up with five more in 2008. Two of the eight cashes were final tables, but he ended up finishing a disappointing seventh and ninth.
Isaac made his European Poker Tour debut in 2008, cashing sixth for $188K in the $20K European Poker Championship High Roller Event. In 2009, he had his best year to date, cashing in three WSOP events, including two final tables; second in the $40K No Limit Hold’em 40th Anniversary Event for $1.1 million and eighth in the $10K World Championship Pot Limit Hold’em for $82K.
Still in the early stages of his poker career, Isaac Haxton will be a force at the tables for years to come. An extremely feared tournament player, he still has the most success online, where he plays high-stakes cash games as ‘luvtheWNBA’.
Click here for Isaac Haxton’s interview with Poker News Daily.
