Andrew Beal

Andrew "Andy" Beal (born 1952) is a Dallas, Texas-based businessman. He made his fortune in banking and real estate, and is the founder and chairman of Beal Bank and Beal Aerospace Technologies. Beal is also known for his high-stakes poker and mathematics activities.

Early life
Beal wanted to be a businessman since he was a teenager in Lansing, Michigan. During his years in high school, he would earn money by fixing televisions and installing apartment alarms, and with his friends he began to relocate dislodged houses. Beal linked hydraulic jacks, and his friends would raise the homes at night, then move them.

Beal, who had excelled on his high school debate team, enrolled at Michigan State University and subsequently attended Baylor University in Texas. At age 19, Beal bought a house for $6,500 (USD) and started renting it for $119 per month, which eventually led to his first net gain as a businessman.

Business career
In 1981, Beal bought a project building in New Jersey, the Brick Towers. Beal became known for buying properties that no one else would want; he figured out that everything he bought could be turned into a profitable property.

His business strategy paid off, and in 1988, he was able to open his first bank in Dallas. At first called Allegiance Savings and Loan Association, the tiny building was the first bank of the company that would later be renamed to Beal Financial, which now includes Beal Bank, Beal Bank Nevada, CSG Investments, Inc, Loan Acquisition Corporation, and Beal Mortgage Services.

During the 1990s, Beal tried to expand Beal Bank's services to include international markets such as Russia and Mexico. These attempts failed, however, and Beal retreated from foreign expansion. In 2000, Beal Bank bought over $1 billion USD in commercial loans from the SBA. These included loans made to businesses in Palau, and the United States Virgin Islands, where some local businesses had borrowed money from American institutions after Hurricane Hugo.

After the September 11, 2001 attacks, Beal once again went against what some call "common business sense", and began buying aircraft debt. He figured the airlines would recover from the tragedy; aircraft debt prices were very low at the time following the attacks, and Beal bought them expecting to sell them once they rebounded in price. Beal Bank makes about $70,000,000 USD of profit a year from those bonds.

Poker playing
A blackjack player in his youth, in 2001 Beal began visiting the Bellagio in Las Vegas to participate in high stakes poker games, especially heads-up Texas hold 'em. During several visits between 2001 and 2004, Beal played a syndicate of professional poker players known as "The Corporation", which included Doyle Brunson, Todd Brunson, Ted Forrest, Jennifer Harman, Howard Lederer, Phil Ivey, Gus Hansen, Barry Greenstein, Chau Giang, and others.

Beal hoped to force the collective group of pros into such high stakes that their play would be influenced by the amount of money at risk. By the end of their encounters in 2004 they were playing $100,000/$200,000 Limit Texas hold 'em heads up with more than $20 million on the table. This story was chronicled in Michael Craig's book, The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time.

While the games outlined in Craig's book ended in 2004, Beal returned to Las Vegas from February 1-5, 2006 to again take on "The Corporation" in a $50,000/100,000 Limit Hold 'Em match at the Wynn Las Vegas Casino. Opponents included Todd Brunson, Jennifer Harman, Ted Forrest, and others.

On February 5 2006, Beal was down $3.3 million (USD). He then returned to the Wynn a week later, and won approximately $13.6 million from the Corporation during daily poker sessions from February 12-15. The games resumed February 21-23, with Phil Ivey representing the Corporation against Beal at limits of $30,000/60,000 and $50,000/100,000. During these three days, Beal lost $16.6 million to Ivey.

Beal is recognized as the poker player who won more money in a poker game in a single day than any other known poker player. On Thursday, May 13, 2004, at the Las Vegas Bellagio, Beal won $11.7 million from Chip Reese, Hamid Dastmalchi, Gus Hansen, and Jennifer Harman.

Mathematical work
Beal's work in mathematical number theory includes his 1993 articulation of Beal's conjecture, and he has offered a $100,000 (USD) prize for its proof or disproof.