Charlie Shoten
Charlie Shoten is a famous poker player who was born in 1937 in New York City and believes that a person becomes a better poker player through self-mastery. Charlie said “It’s a Zen kind of thing.”
Charlie Shoten learned how to play poker when he was five, and has seen many different poker games. However, very few people have played against Charlie Shoten. For most of his poker playing career, Charlie used an alias of Scotty Warbucks. He doesn’t remember how he came up with the alias, but says he did it so nobody would know that he was winning a lot of money.
Charlie Shoten graduated from the University of Alabama, and spent a long portion of his life as an insurance salesman. He retired in 1990 and moved to California to play poker. He had to learn No Limit Texas Holdem, a game he wasn’t familiar with, fairly quickly. His first game of No Limit Texas Holdem was a $3000 satellite event at the Hustler Casino in Los Angeles, which he won. Speaking about this victory, Charlie Shoten stated, “All of a sudden I just sat at the table and knew how to play.”
Helped by televised poker tournaments and revelations of his true identity, Charlie Shoten’s alias, Scotty Warbucks, began to fade away in 2001. In 2003, Charlie Shoten made it to 19 different final tables in major tournaments.
Charlie Shoten is the author of the book, No Limit Life, which is a poker book, but could also be considered a guidebook for life because it talks a lot about how to live a better life. Charlie Shoten currently lives in Glendale, California.
