Erick A. Lindgren (born August 11, 1976, in
Burney, California
Burney is an unincorporated town and census-designated place (CDP) in Shasta County, California, United States. Its population is 3,000 as of the 2020 census, down from 3,154 from the 2010 census. Burney is located on State Route 299, about 4 ...
) is an American professional
poker
Poker is a family of comparing card games in which players wager over which hand is best according to that specific game's rules. It is played worldwide, however in some places the rules may vary. While the earliest known form of the game w ...
player. He has won two World Poker Tour (WPT) titles, two World Series of Poker bracelets, and more than $10,500,000 in tournament earnings during his poker career. As of April 2020 he is 85th on the all-time money list of poker.
Poker career
He won his first major tournament at the
Bellagio in 2002 and followed that up with his first
World Poker Tour
The World Poker Tour (WPT) is an internationally televised gaming and entertainment brand. Since 2002, the World Poker Tour has operated a series of international poker tournaments and associated television series broadcasting playdown and the ...
(WPT) win ten months later. Six months later, he won the WPT
PartyPoker Million III cruise, where he walked away with the million dollar top prize.
In January 2005, he finished runner-up in the
World Series of Poker
The World Series of Poker (WSOP) is a series of poker tournaments held annually in Paradise, Nevada and, since 2004, sponsored by Caesars Entertainment. It dates its origins to 1970, when Benny Binion invited seven of the best-known poker p ...
Circuit Event in
Atlantic City. In February, he finished fifth in the WPT
LA Poker Classic and just a week later, he won the second
Professional Poker Tour tournament, also in LA.
In January 2006, he made another WPT final table, finishing third at the 2006 Borgata Winter Poker Open.
In June 2006, Lindgren won the $600,000 first prize in the FullTiltPoker.net Poker Pro Showdown event, outlasting
Mike Matusow,
Clonie Gowen,
Erik Seidel
Erik Seidel (born November 6, 1959) is an American professional poker player from Las Vegas, Nevada, who has won nine World Series of Poker bracelets and a World Poker Tour title. In 2010, he was inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame.
Early li ...
,
John Juanda
Johnson "John" Juanda (born July 8, 1971) is an Indonesian professional poker player of Chinese descent based in Tokyo, Japan. He has won five World Series of Poker bracelets.
Personal life
Juanda was born into a Hoklo family in Medan, N ...
,
Chris Ferguson
Christopher Philip Ferguson (born April 11, 1963) is an American professional poker player. He has won six World Series of Poker events, including the 2000 WSOP Main Event, and the 2008 NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship. Ferguson is a ...
, and
Phil Ivey
Phillip Dennis Ivey Jr. (born February 1, 1977) is an American professional poker player who has won ten World Series of Poker bracelets, one World Poker Tour title, and appeared at nine World Poker Tour final tables. Ivey is regarded by numero ...
. Lindgren's winning hand came in the first hand of heads-up play when his defeated Matusow's on a board of .
In January 2007, Lindgren won
A$1 million after beating 17 other players in the $100,000 buy-in Hold'em event at the
Aussie Millions.
Lindgren is the author of the book, "World Poker Tour: Making the Final Table", which covers strategy for poker tournaments.
Both the first name 'Erick' and the family name 'Lindgren' are Swedish names, representative of his Swedish ancestry.
He is a former member of "Team Full Tilt" at
Full Tilt Poker. In February 2008, Lindgren hosted "FTOPS Event #9", part of Full Tilt's series of large buy-in tournaments. The tournament had over 5,600 entrants, and had a prize pool of over $1.65 million. Lindgren won the tournament becoming the first Full Tilt pro to win an FTOPS event that they hosted. He took home over $291,000.
As of September 2012, according to Howard Lederer's interview, Lindgren has a loan of $4,000,000 to FullTilt.
On June 27, 2007, Lindgren won a $350,000 prop bet with
Gavin Smith,
Phil Ivey
Phillip Dennis Ivey Jr. (born February 1, 1977) is an American professional poker player who has won ten World Series of Poker bracelets, one World Poker Tour title, and appeared at nine World Poker Tour final tables. Ivey is regarded by numero ...
and others. To win the bet, Erick had to play four consecutive rounds of golf at Las Vegas' "Bear's Best" golf course between sunrise and sunset. He had to carry his own bags and shoot under 100 in each of the four rounds. Temperatures reached 106 degrees and symptoms of heat exhaustion set in, but Erick won the bet. He said on a PokerListings interview that he lost 12 pounds during the bet.
On June 5, 2008, Lindgren defeated
Justin Bonomo
Justin Bonomo (born September 30, 1985) (known online as ZeeJustin) is an American high-stakes professional poker player, and a former '' Magic the Gathering'' competitor. He became the youngest player to be featured at a televised final table o ...
during heads-up play for his first
World Series of Poker bracelet in the $5,000 buy-in mixed no-limit/limit Hold'em event at the
2008 World Series of Poker
The 2008 World Series of Poker was the 39th annual World Series of Poker (WSOP). Held in Las Vegas, Nevada at the Rio All Suite Hotel and Casino, the series began on May 30th, 2008, and featured 55 poker championships in List of poker variants, ...
. In May 2013, Erick finished second in the WPT championship for $700,000
As of 2018, his total live tournament winnings exceed $10,300,000. His 40 cashes at the WSOP account for $3,120,803 of those winnings.
World Series of Poker bracelets
In 2008, he was named
WSOP Player of the Year. With five total cashes, he earned $1,348,528 in prize money.
Personal life
On May 29, 2011, Erick married fellow poker player Erica Schoenberg. They have one child.
[ Lindgren and Schoenberg divorced in March 2014. .
]
Gambling debts and rehab
As a sponsored professional, Lindgren had been receiving a monthly paycheck from Full Tilt Poker, but he lost that income when Black Friday struck on April 15, 2011. An avid sports bettor, he was saddled with sizable gambling debts he could not repay.[ In late November 2012, Lindgren entered a rehab program for ]problem gambling
Problem gambling or ludomania is repetitive gambling behavior despite harm and negative consequences. Problem gambling may be diagnosed as a mental disorder according to ''DSM-5'' if certain diagnostic criteria are met. Pathological gambling is ...
.[ According to an interview he gave with '' Bluff Magazine'' in January 2013, he had come to a payment schedule agreement with those to whom he owed money.] In the Lederer Files, Howard Lederer states that Erick Lindgren was given several million-dollar loans as a member of Full Tilt Poker. Lindgren then refused to answer texts and phone calls by Lederer requesting repayment. Lindgren never paid back millions to Full Tilt Poker. In June 2015, Lindgren refiled for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection
Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code (Title 11 of the United States Code) permits reorganization under the bankruptcy laws of the United States. Such reorganization, known as Chapter 11 bankruptcy, is available to every business, whe ...
in a District of Nevada United States Bankruptcy Court, citing a cumulative debt load of more than ten million dollars and available assets of less than $50,000.
Bibliography
*''World Poker Tour: Making the Final Table'' (2005)
Notes
External links
Official site
World Poker Tour profile
PokerListings.com profile
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lindgren, Erick
1976 births
American poker players
Living people
World Poker Tour winners
World Series of Poker bracelet winners
WSOP Player of the Year Award winners
People from Shasta County, California
People from the Las Vegas Valley
American people of Swedish descent