The name Greg “Fossilman” Raymer may seem odd to most people – but for poker fans, it is a recognizable one because this Raleigh resident has 30+ cash wins to underline his star status as a WSOP Millionaire who has consistently played well in poker tournaments to stack up a total winning amount of $6,747,662 from tournament events.
He has finished in first place 3 times and has one WSOP bracelet to his credit with a switch in his gambling preferences that helped him secure this position.
Greg was a Blackjack player to start with and it was only in 1992 that he started taking poker seriously; he was 39 when he achieved his ambition of becoming a World Champion at his new favorite card game.
His wife Cheryl and daughter Sophie are aware of Greg’s love for No Limit Texas Hold’em games as much as his eccentric but lovable habit of collecting all types of fossils, which is why he has been tagged as ‘Fossilman.’
Greg, for his part, reveals that his hobby of his serves as vital card protectors that he keeps on his tilt poker table all the time; these have been his lucky charm ever since he first started playing ‘nickel-dime’ poker games during his college days when his toughest opponents were friendly fraternity guys. From these humble beginnings, Greg was quick in making his way from 3-6, 20-40 to 150-300 games till the time he got to Connecticut and moved up to playing at the Foxwoods Casino during their tournament sessions held on a weekly basis. He also did fairly well in the cash games organized by these two established poker rooms, which boosted his confidence for playing higher stakes games.
However, it was only in 2004, during the WSOP main event where Greg outstripped 2,575 other players and secured first position that he was able to claim the $5,000,000 in prize money for his efforts – and considering he won this with a $160 buy-in for an online tournament (organized by Pokerstars.com) it is easy to understand why this was one of the best return on investment Greg Raymer says he has ever made! The 5 million dollars in prize money was at the time the biggest amount anyone had earned from a single event, which made Greg a record holder of sorts. (Just for the record, Pokerstars.com had generated only one other WSOP winner before Greg, namely Chris Moneymaker).
After his WSOP ’04 win, Greg continued being the family man he is and devoted more time to his wife and daughter than to poker games, though he participated in the occasional tournament. Though he was born in Lansing, Michigan, he currently resides in Stonington, in Connecticut with his family – a place he moved to in 1999 because he wanted to be in close proximity to the poker room at Foxwoods Resorts.
Greg likes to look at his WSOP game strategy similar to any other technique he’d use for live poker games – that is, to analyze for improving one’s game constantly and playing each session for itself. Truly the kind of answer one would expect from a former patent attorney and full-time poker professional focusing on marrying success with style (remember his lizard style hologram glasses bought from Disney world?) without losing out on mathematical precision for notching big number winnings.