Player Update: Isaac Baron

I told the guy “I'm driving an Maserati and own a 2 million dollar house, do you really think I am gonna try and screw you out of a couple hundred dollars”....

This sentence is part of a recent blog entry from Isaac Baron: it seems to perfectly sum up just how well the California native has been running over the last 2 years as he continues to make vast sums of money at an unbelievable rate.

The man known as Mr. Menlo was named Online Player of the Year in 2007 but now live pros will also be fully aware of Baron as he continues to enhance his reputation in all forms of the game.
Part of the reason for this can be attributed to his Full Tilt sponsorship deal, meaning he now plays under his own name as part of the agreement that brought all of Team Cardrunners over to the self-titled home of the pros.

It’s easy to see why they would be so keen for his services. Though Baron doesn’t put in the same amount of hours as other tournament professionals such as Shaun Deeb, he achieves equally outstanding results. Under his previous FT alias of ‘the guru 11’ he landed the Sunday Mulligan & the $55k GTD in February for over $72,000 before coming through a 4,158 runner field in May to take down FTOPS Event #1 ($200 NLH) for a cool $158,852 (this turned out to be his penultimate cash on the site before that alias was closed). On PokerStars, ‘westmenloAA’ now has over $1.5million in prizes and in May took down the $5,000 Winner Takes All for $65,000 before topping that in the prestigious WCOOP Series. Menlo finished runner-up in Event #16 ($200 PLO) for $70,980 after losing out to Andy McLEOD in heads-up play – as talented a final two as any WCOOP Event has ever seen.

But despite these major scores alone, which tot up to more than $300,000, Baron has been increasingly branching out to live poker and in April he finally hit the big time with two very impressive scores in the space of just 12 days. First, he finished 11th in the EPT San Remo for $45,421 before the biggest result of his life at the EPT Grand Final. The California native was making a serious run at the title and $3.1million first prize before losing a huge pot with AK against Luca Pagano’s KJ which severely crippled his stack – eventually, he unluckily departed in 4th place for a still substantial $932,006. Check out the key hand below: (the two players are already all-in):



In his blog entry for November, Baron says he has turned increasingly to cash games recently as they offer better flexibility than tournaments and he has been a welcome face in the biggest NLH & PLO games running on Full Tilt. We thought we would put in this hand with Sami ‘LarsLuzak’ Kelopuro to demonstrate that not even the great Menlo is immune from the occasional outdraw in a 6-figure pot:



Both AJKHoosier and Annette_15 have named Baron as one of their most feared opponents and he even hosted his own FTOPS Event ($300 Re-Buy) in the most recent series: Mr. Menlo looks to be making the transition from online superstar to household name with seamless ease.