Team FullTilt Signs First Blind Poker Pro

October 4, 2008

Full Tilt Poker just signed on its newest, and quite likely its most unique, member of Team Full Tilt in Hal Lubarsky, the first blind person ever to walk away from a WSOP event in the money.

Lubarsky had already been a top rated poker pro in Las Vegas for more than a decade, known to be “one of the best high limit cash game players” in town [says he] before he progressively lost his sight over the ‘80s and ‘90s. Going blind barely slowed down this strident poker player though, as he excelled in both the 2007 and 2008 World Series of Poker main events.

Before being asked to join Team Full Tilt, Lubarsky had already been playing (blind) at 6-handed, multi-tabling ring games at FullTilt Poker to great success.

To play online poker as a blind man, Lubarsky simply uses a program called a Reader that gives him a voice rundown of the action and then, being part-speech recognition software, executes the commands Hal dictates.

Keep that in mind next time someone tells you you don’t have what it takes to participate in some activity, not to mention if you or some other poker lover you know is blind and wishes they too could enjoy playing online poker.

Written by admin · Filed Under Full Tilt News 

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