Howard Lederer
Howard ‘The Professor’ Lederer is one of the most prominent and well known member of the Full Tilt Poker team.
He is known throughout the poker world and is very much in the public eye with regular appearances as a commentator / expert on a number of TV poker shows.
Howard has been heavily involved in the development of Full Tilt Poker right from the very start and has had an input in shaping the room into the hugely successful and popular room that it is today.
Background
Growing up in Concord, New Hampshire, Howard and his sister (Annie Duke – another well known pro) learnt to play cards at an early age, largely due to their father Richard Lederer. Richard was a competitive character and this trait quickly passed onto Howard and Annie.
The Mayfair Club – New York
Howard was due to attend Columbia College in New York City, but decided to take a year out to follow his ambition of becoming a professional Chess player.
If you see this avatar on Full Tilt Poker then you are playing with
Howard Lederer!
It was during this year and in pursuit of his Chess dream that he stumbled across the Mayfair Club in New York. This famous club which also produced other great poker players such as Dan Harrington and Erik Seidel, was the re-introduction to poker that Lederer needed and in particular he was introduced to Texas Holdem.
An elite group of players formed at this club and Howard soon became part of it, this group would play poker all evening and then after they finished playing would all go off and drink at the bar whilst discussing the evening’s poker and discussing better strategy.
Towards the end of the eighties Howard was playing in higher stakes games and had outgrown the games he had been a regular at. It was at this time that he moved to Las Vegas to seek out these higher stakes games.
It was also around this time that he went on to teach his sister Annie Duke who also went on to move to Las Vegas together with her Husband later that year. Annie has gone on to become one of the most successful female poker players of all time and both Howard and Annie hold a record as the first brother-sister combination to make it to the same WSOP final table.
Lederer – The Professor
The nickname of ‘The Professor’ was largely given to Howard as a result of his analytical and mathematical approach to Poker, this probably as a result of his history as a championship level Chess player and Backgammon player, giving him a good foundation for this style of play.
Despite being nicknamed ‘The Professor’ and being recognised as one of the most astute and clever players around, the ironic fact is that Lederer never did find his way to college after taking a year out.
During the 1990′s Howard really became a feared opponent and became known to everybody on the poker scene. During this period Lederer cleaned up at the high stakes cash games and built a secure financial future for his family.
It wasn’t until 2002 that Lederer came more into the public eye when during the poker boom he focused more on the big tournaments than the cash games. During 2003 he won two World Poker Tour events just as the WPT was at the height of popularity.
Since then Howard has proved himself as an astute businessman as well as a world class poker player and has continued to build his profile and his off the table work through developing a series of instructional poker DVDs and through his appearances on many poker shows as a commentator / expert.
Lederer also takes his role at FullTilt Poker extremely seriously and has been involved from the conception of this online poker room. Howard regularly writes for the users of Full Tilt Poker giving them strategy advice and you can regularly see him playing and chatting with his fans at the Full Tilt tables.
Learn, Play and Chat with Howard Lederer and the other Full Tilt Pro’s. Download Full Tilt Poker‘s free online poker software today.
