– General Introduction –
David Oppenheim is an American professional poker player. He was born on March 7th, 1973 in Los Angeles, CA.
Oppenheim has mostly played live cash games during his career. He’s a regular in the world famous high stakes cash room at the Bellagio, Bobby’s Room (now renamed Legends Room) where he played stakes as high as $4,000/$8,000. He also appeared on the classic poker TV show on NBC, Poker After Dark, where he played $100/$200 NLHE cash against the likes of Phil Ivey and Tom Dwan.
Despite mainly focusing on cash games, he has some impressive tourney scores as well. He has nearly $2 million in live tournament cashes, which includes two victories from the 2011 Aussie Millions.
In 2019, he got inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame, thus earning him his rhyming nickname “Hall of Fame Dave”.
– Key Career Dates –
- c. 1993: He starts playing live cash games for a living.
- 2010: He finishes 3rd in the $50,000 WSOP Poker Player’s Championship mixed game event for $603,348. That is the biggest single live tournament cash of his career to date.
- 2011: He appears on the very last episode of the classic poker TV show Poker After Dark airing on NBC.
- 2019: He gets inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame.
– David Oppenheim’s Career –
→ Beginnings ←
Oppenheim grew up in California, with parents who avidly played poker to supplement their income from their office supply business. Naturílly, the young Dave Oppenheim took a liking to the card game as well. He recanted his journey into professional poker in a 2010 profile piece on him by Cardplayer Magazine.
He started playing live cash games at 16, underaged, at the Bicycle Card Club (now known as the famous Bicycle Casino) while constantly getting into arguments with the security staff about his fake ID.
Oppenheim originally didn’t plan on going pro. He attended Cal State Northridge college while playing $10/$20 Limit Hold’em on the side to earn some cash. However, he quickly realized that he can make serious money at the poker tables.
During his first year in college, he won $45,000. The next year, he moved to the $200/$400 Limit Hold’em tables – while, evidently, not putting too much work into his studies.
This could only end in one way: after his sophomore year, at age 19, Oppenheim dropped out of college to pursue playing poker professionally. He’s been an elite poker pro for over 20 years now.
→ Live Tournaments ←
Oppenheim’s Hendon page shows $1.991 million in live tournament earnings. That sum is the product of cashes in 29 different events over the course of 18 years.
His live tournament resume is even more impressive given the fact that he has always put most of his volume into live cash games during his career.
The first recorded cash on his profile is from the 2001 World Series of Poker. The first time he made a live tournament score for over $100K was in September 2003. He finished 3rd in the $5,150 NLHE Championship event at the WPT Borgata Poker Open and won $117,500. His final table featured 2001 WSOP Main Event champion Carlos Mortensen and 2-time WSOP gold bracelet winner Jennifer Harman.
Oppenheim made two deep runs in the NBC National Heads-Up Championship. In 2009, he finished 5th; and in 2011, he finished 8th. He cashed for $75,000 both times.
In February 2009, he came in 4th in the $10,000 Heads-Up NLHE Championship at the LA Poker Classic. He pocketed exactly $75,000 in a heads-up tournament once again!
His biggest live tournament cash outside the WSOP comes from the 2011 Aussie Millions. In January 2011, he took down the Full Tilt Poker Invitational Shootout freeroll event for A$250,000 (which equaled $247,255 at the time).
→ World Series of Poker ←
David Oppenheim is yet to win his first WSOP gold bracelet. However, that doesn’t mean that he’s without any impressive results from the World Series.
At the 2010 WSOP, he made it to the final in the biggest mixed game event in the world, the $50,000 Poker Players Championship. He eventually busted in 3rd place for $603,348, which is the biggest single live tournament score of his career to date.
He got knocked out by the eventual winner Michael Mizrachi, who went on to win this prestigious event two more times.
Oppenheim too was back at the final table of the $50K Poker Players Championship two more times: in 2012 he finished 9th for $142,197; and in 2019 he finished 7th for $124,410.
Overall, Oppenheim cashed in 10 World Series events for a total of $1.111 million combined.
→ Live Cash Games ←
As we wrote earlier, Oppenheim started off as a Limit Hold’em cash player in California. Back then, before the Moneymaker boom, Limit cash games were a lot more common than No Limit cash games, so there is nothing unusual about his game of choice.
Oppenheim stuck to cash games as the primary focus of his career throughout. He eventually made it into the highest stakes games ($4,000/$8,000 and higher) held at the famous Bobby’s Room (now renamed Legends Room) at the Bellagio.
As a testament to what a true grinder he is, Oppenheim even spent his Christmas Eve in 2019 playing cards in Bobby’s Room. Another regular in the joint, Gus Hansen posted a video to his Instagram about the festive $1,000/$2,000 PLO session.
View this post on Instagram
He also appeared on shows where he played live cash on camera multiple times.
Oppenheim was featured in the last two episodes of the original run of the classic TV show Poker After Dark which aired in November 2011. He played a session of $100/$200 NLHE cash in a 6-handed line-up with Tom Dwan, Phil Ivey, Patrik Antonius, Eli Elezra, and David Peat.
In February 2009, he caught up with Cardplayer Magazine for a brief interview for their YouTube channel. He was asked about the worst downswing he’d ever had.
Oppenheim revealed that in the private cash game hosted by adult magazine mogul Larry Flynt, he lost 12 sessions in a row. His losing streak culminated in a $1.8 million loss in a rather soft game.
→ Online Poker ←
Oppenheim used to play under his real name as his screen name, “David Oppenheim”, on the late online poker room Full Tilt. He was one of the sponsored “Full Tilt Red Pros” who would have their screen name written in red font in the client.
The online high stakes cash game database has 160,283 hands tracked on that account, played between January 2007 and May 2011. In that sample, he’s up $789,746. His most common game type was the mixed game H.O.R.S.E on $300/$600 and $500/$1,000 stakes.
Looking at his graph, we can see some serious swings for Oppenheim. In October 2009, for example, he was down around $530K. However, by the end of February 2010, he was $1.74 million in the black.
