GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 13 - June 2010

“Who’s Your Daddy?” He launched a Who’s Your Daddy-branded clothing line that sold in Kohl’s and Mervyn’s, gross- ingmore than$15million in sales. At the seminar, Esfandiari learned that Fleysh- man was the youngest CEO of a publicly traded company in America, and that bit of information stuckwithhim. Esfandiari visitedFleyshmanduringa trip toSanDi- ego and the two became fast friends. Just over a year ago, Fleyshman relocated to Las Vegas andmoved into the same con- dominium tower as Esfandiari. Last sum- mer, Fleyshman approached Esfandiari to see if hewould be interested in joining him inhisonlinepoker venture. “I knew if I had him, with his charisma, he could convince the rest of the crew to sign on and it would give me the cred- ibility to do a lot of other things within the pokerworld,” says Fleyshman. Esfandiari, who had previously promot- ed Ultimate Bet and the World Poker Tour’s European-facing online poker room, was quick to agree. “I thinkDan’s a great businessman, so of course I was interested,” says Esfandiari. “To be part of something from its incep- tion, from its beginning, felt like the right move. I didn’twant tobeoneof thepeons at Full Tilt or PokerStars. With Ultimate Bet Iwas one of three people, withWorld Poker Tour, I was the only guy, and if I was going to sign another deal, I wanted tobeoneof themainguys.” Once Esfandiari signed on, a cadre of his friends and fellow professionals joined him. Dan “Blitz” Bilzerian, Keith “KG” Gipson, Brian “TSARRAST” Rast, Andrew “good2cu” Robl and David “The Maven” Chicotsky joinedthegroup,asdidWasicka, LeeMarkholt,AlecTorelli andahandful of othersprofessionals.Fleyshmanalsomade some news in the poker press by signing 2007 Playboy Playmate of the Year Sara JeanUnderwood toa sponsorshipdeal. While assembling his team, Fleyshman was faced with his next big decision: se- lecting the online poker network that would host his players. Instead of choos- ing one of the industry’s major players, Fleyshman opted for the Everleaf Poker Network, which then had an average of less than 100 cash game players at any given time. He moved to Malta, where Everleaf is based, to have direct access to the software developers so he could be in constant communication with them on what heneeded tobuildhis site. “I chose Everleaf because the software developers had just won back-to-back in- The Face of Things to Come