Allen Kessler

Allen “The Chainsaw” Kessler was born and raised in the Philadelphia area and attended Temple University where he had a double major in Marketing and Management. He held jobs for over 10 years before moving to Las Vegas and turning into a full time professional poker player. Kessler has over $3.1 million in tournament earnings to his credit and is ranked in the top 150 in the Global Poker Index. Kessler is also part of the Team Ivey training website.

Kessler is known for his ability to outlast a majority of players in tournaments with a long history of minimum cashes at different events. While he has yet to win a World Series of Poker event, he has 37 cashes, but only a handful of final tables. In total Kessler has just over $3.1 million in career cashes, but only 5 over $100,000 and his largest is a 2nd place finish at the 2007 World Series of Poker.

Kessler has become known not only for his ability to play poker, but for tendency to criticize tournament for having what he deems a bad blind structure. His threads on poker forums such as twoplustwo.com are infamous. This criticism of blind structures fits with his other known qualities that have made him famous such as: playing penny slots, trying to take advantage of video poker machines on a jackpot, collecting food vouchers from players who didn’t want them and other instances of trying to take full advantage casino comps.

Allen Kessler on Twitter