Ted Forrest

Ted Forrest (born September 24, 1964 in Syracuse, New York) is an American professional poker player, currently residing in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Forrest won three bracelets at the 1993 World Series of Poker (WSOP). After the mid-1990s, Forrest turned his attention full time to cash games. He made a triumphant return to the WSOP by winning 2 bracelets at the 2004 WSOP. Since then he has moved his focus from seven card stud to hold 'em with some success, including reaching 5 final tables on the World Poker Tour and winning a championship on the Professional Poker Tour.

Forrest is well known as a competitive high stakes gambler. He has been a key part of a consortium of poker players who pooled their money together to play Texas billionaire Andy Beal in a series of very high limit, heads-up, Texas Holdem games, with limits ranging anywhere from $20,000/$40,000 to $100,000/$200,000.

Forrest also participates in many proposition bets, such as betting John Hennigan $10,000 that Huck Seed's brother Leif could not run to L.A. from Las Vegas while only sleeping twice. His 'healthy disregard for money' that is so beneficial to his poker game also leads to reports that he has bankrolled losing players and invested imprudently in the past.

Forrest is generally regarded as one of the best stud players in the world. While not considered to be quite as formidable in Hold'Em as he is in various Stud games, Forrest has still won several hold'em tournaments in recent years.

Forrest competed in the second season of Poker Superstars Invitational Tournament, where he advanced to the quarter-final stage. He did not fare as well in season three, being mathematically eliminated early in the preliminaries. He played in the first two seasons of the GSN series High Stakes Poker.

In March 2006, Forrest won the annual National Heads-Up Poker Championship, defeating (in order) Erik Seidel, Chad Brown, Ernie Dureck, Sam Farha, "Sheiky" Shahram Sheikhan and Chris Ferguson to win the $500,000 first prize.

Continuing with his history of tournament success, in March 2007 Ted won the Bay 101 Shooting Stars Tournament, outlasting J. J. Liu in the longest heads up duel in World Poker Tour history. For the victory, Forrest collected the first prize of $1,125,000.

As of 2008, his total live tournament winnings exceed $5,400,000.

World Series of Poker Bracelets
Forrest's first three bracelets were stolen. He gave one of the remaining two to his daughter; and has the other locked away. Ted also owns one WSOP championship bracelet that formerly belonged to Hamid Dastmalchi, which he purchased from Dastmalchi after he (Dastmalchi) complained that the bracelet wasn't worth what the Binion family claimed. Hamid told him, “They say it’s worth $5,000, but I’d take $1,500 for it” to which Forrest replied "Sold" and tossed him three $500 chips.