Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian shares how he went from a poker novice to an online poker grinder under the guidance of Annie Duke, and recounts his unforgettable experiences with legends like Phil Hellmuth.
Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian has sold millions of records, performed for 50,000 metal fans at Yankee Stadium, and is even considered the man who popularized the term "mosh pit." This metal legend has also run multiple high-stakes online tournaments simultaneously, partied with poker legends in the Caribbean, and even played poker while performing on stage with the band he led for 45 years.
About 20 years ago, Ian (whose band Anthrax is considered one of the "Big Four" of thrash metal alongside Metallica) inadvertently started a side business as a sponsored poker player. Ian's poker career began in the late 2000s and ended in 2011. During that time, he played poker for up to 90 hours a week and earned thousands of dollars in online poker games, which he described as "like an ATM for me."
"I've become the kind of (poker) gambler I used to really enjoy," said the Anthrax guitarist. "It's a very strange... anomaly in my life."
During an April trip to Las Vegas to guide tours at the Punk Rock Museum, the guitarist, who is touring with Anthrax and preparing to release the band's first album in ten years, spoke with PokerNews about his four-year journey through the world of poker.
Laying the foundation
Poker wasn't part of Ian's early life growing up in Queens, New York. In 1981, at the age of 18, Ian was busy founding Anthrax, a band that went on to sell millions of records and is widely regarded as one of the greatest metal bands of all time. Ian's signature grey (sometimes black or red) goatee, which he still sports today, has become an instantly recognizable metal trademark.
Aside from playing seven-card stud a few times with his mother as a child, this guitarist was a complete poker novice when he was invited to participate in the 2006 VH1 Classic Rock 'n' Roll Celebrity Poker Tournament. The event, held at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas, featured a lineup of rock stars including Ace Frehley of KISS and Vinnie Paul of Pantra.
“I didn’t even know how to play Texas Hold’em when I went to that VH1 tournament,” Ian said. “The only reason I went to that tournament was because a lot of my friends were going. I knew people in VH1, and I thought, wow, what a great excuse to go to Las Vegas and party with my friends for the weekend. So I managed to get myself into that tournament.”
Ian prepared by watching the TV series "Poker After Dark," where he studied the battles between poker players like Phil Hellmuth, Antonio Esfandiari, and Phil Laak for six-figure pots. He later encountered these three at the VH1 tournament hosted by World Poker Tour (WPT) tournament director Matt Savage.
"That period is definitely one I remember," Savage told PokerNews. "It was the peak of poker's popularity, with more and more celebrities getting into the game."
Despite doing his homework, Ian didn't have high expectations when facing ZZ Top's Dusty Hill and experienced grinders like Godsmack's lead singer Sully Erna. Erna is a serious player who later finished as runner-up in the 2007 Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Series of Poker Classic, winning $307,325.
"All I was thinking was that I'd be out in about five minutes, then I could go out for drinks with my wife and have some fun," Ian said.
But, in Ian's words, "the universe has other plans for me." He watched his rock star companions being eliminated one by one in the singles tournament, and eventually he found himself in heads-up with the much more experienced Erna.
Despite being a "complete amateur" and having a chip deficit of "about four or five to one," Ian, playing as a timid and passive player, had enough intuition to play aggressively in the first few hands of heads-up play when he got an Ace.
"Even though I know so little about Texas Hold'em, I know that having an Ace in heads-up play is incredibly strong," he said. "So I went from being the tightest player on Earth, someone who had no idea what he was doing, to playing way too aggressively... like Loki switching back from being left-handed to a normal hand position."
Ian ultimately beat Erna to win a check for $25,000, which he donated to his chosen charity—Lifebeat Inc., a nonprofit that works with musicians to prevent HIV infection among teenagers.
Ian overcame numerous obstacles, beating Erna to win a $25,000 check and a "fun little trophy I took home" to Los Angeles. But his poker story was just beginning.
Party like a poker player
Months later, Ian was surprised to receive a "sudden" call from a representative of the poker website Ultimate Bet, informing him that as part of the VH1 tournament prize package, he had won a trip to the 2007 Ultimate Bet Aruba Poker Classic, one of the premier poker events at the time. He couldn't refuse a free trip to the Caribbean.
Although he was quickly eliminated from the tournament—"I went all in with KK against AA"—he and his wife Pearl stayed behind and spent a week partying with Hellmuth and Ultimate Bet online pros Mark “P0ker H0” Kroon, Gary “DEBO34” DeBernarndi, and Shawn Rice, who remain Ian’s friends nearly 20 years later.
"We didn't really start getting to know each other until we went to Aruba," Hellmuth told PokerNews in an interview. "I thought, this guy is really smart and funny. I was really impressed with Scott."
“He’s a very down-to-earth person,” Rice agreed. The Texas-based pro, while acknowledging that Anthrax’s music “might be a little too intense for my taste,” immediately bonded with the guitarist over their shared love of KISS. “We have a lot in common. He’s a real music lover overall. He enjoys all kinds of music.”
In the following years, Ian returned to the Aruba Classic and documented it all on a YouTube channel called "scottianpoker". A video from the 2009 Carnival opening ceremony shows Ian swimming at night around a pool packed with poker players, including 2006 WSOP Player of the Year Jeff Madsen, poker stars Liv Boeree and Hellmuth (Hellmuth was wearing a shirt in the pool while hosting the opening ceremony in waist-deep water).
"Ultimate Bet Aruba. That's fucking awesome!" Ian cheered in the video.
Hellmuth even hosts parties in his three-bedroom penthouse in Aruba, which he describes as "as big as a hotel." One year, he paid a guitarist to play live at a party. "This isn't your average penthouse," says the 17-times-gold-bracelet winner. "We'll have parties on the roof."
"I got to hang out with all these super crazy poker players," Ian told PokerNews. "Partying, betting, all sorts of things. I think these guys are crazier than any band members I know. It's... a world I know (as a musician), but it's completely different."
Kroon recalls going to a very upscale steakhouse in Aruba with Ian, Erna from the God's Gang, and a group of top poker players including Esfandiari and Dave "Devilfish" Ulliott. Like many good poker players, they decided to settle the bill with a bet. The bill for that big party was around $2,000, but Ian, unaware they should write it down, blurted out a low guess of $500, eliciting laughter from everyone at the table.
"The funny thing is, Scott had absolutely no idea (what the price would be)," Kroon said. "When the bill was actually $2,000, he genuinely thought it was $500. We all made fun of him about it."
Signing with Ultimate Bet
Ian is about to become more familiar with the world of poker. Will Griffiths, the marketing director of Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker, told Ian they wanted to sign him as a pro player for the site's team. Ian is unsure. After all, he's an inexperienced poker player.
“We didn’t sign you because of your poker skills,” he recalled Griffiths telling him. “It’s your face and your name; it’s obvious people will want to play with you and then deposit money on the site.”
Ian didn't like that. "If I'm going to do it, I want to know what I'm doing," he told the website executive. "You guys need to arrange poker lessons for me."
His efforts to secure a poker coach paid off. After signing with Ultimate Bet in March 2008, the site arranged for him to be mentored by Hellmuth and fellow pro Annie Duke, who, like Ian, lived in Los Angeles.
(Ultimate Bet was later revealed to be involved in a "superuser" scandal, defrauding players of tens of millions of dollars. While most of the sponsored pros associated with the site were unharmed, Duke was accused of knowingly cheating, which she denied. She subsequently pursued a career as a psychology writer.)
"For the next month, I'll go to Annie's house a few times a week," Ian said. "She'll teach me how to play cards, and all the math and stuff."
Duke may be an unpopular figure in the poker world today, due to her association with Ultimate Bet and the failed Epic Poker League, but Ian described the player with $4.2 million in winnings as "a great coach".
"Annie really knows how to teach me, how to help me understand the game, and how my brain works. I'm very good at mathematical thinking, so this worked very well for me."
"In my opinion, Annie Duke was probably one of the best coaches (back then)," Rice agreed, while Kroon pointed out that Ian absorbed poker coaching knowledge "like a sponge."
Poker on the tour—and on stage—
Between 2008 and 2009, Ian developed into an experienced online poker player. He called into Rounders Radio's "Ultimate Poker Show" to discuss poker games and appeared on the reality poker show "Best Damn Poker Show," a seven-week competition between two teams led by Hellmuth and Duke.
"My poker game progressed very quickly," he said, noting that at his home in Los Angeles, he would run 16 to 20 tables at a time on a large computer monitor. "(At first) I knew nothing, and three months later I was playing six-handed tables." 100 and200 quick sit and go. They're like ATMs to me.
Ian continues to document this journey on YouTube. One video shows him playing online poker in his hotel room at the Hard Rock Casino in Las Vegas, while another video, titled "Texas Drunk'em," shows him playing poker at the Hard Rock Hotel with Alice Prisoners frontman Jerry Cantrell and Pantra drummer Vinnie Paul (whom he had played with in the VH1 tournament).
A highlight of Ian's poker career came in March 2009 when he defeated 1,007 players to win $44,000 in a guaranteed $200,000 Sunday tournament. He had previously finished fourth, seventh, and ninth in the same event, where he had a $215 bounty on his head as an Ultimate Bet ambassador.
“He actually became a pretty good player,” Kroon said. “He used to be so tight, you couldn’t get him to put a chip in the pot at first, and then we got him to relax…and he really learned.”
WPT's Matt Savage offered a similar assessment: "He and Sully Erna are definitely two of the best (celebrity) poker players I remember from that era. They knew what they were doing."
During the turbulent period following the band's unpleasant separation from lead singer Dan Nelson, poker became a necessary escape for the Anthrax guitarist. By May 2010, when Anthrax reunited with their iconic lead singer Joey Belladonna and toured Europe and the US with Metallica, Slayer, and Megadeth, Ian had fully embraced his new hobby. And it was during the tour that the real poker began.
When Ian toured with Anthrax at the turn of the 2010s, he played cards in the locker room, on stage during auditions, and in the back seat of the European tour bus—often in the middle of the night, because the tournaments were arranged to accommodate American players.
“I played for about 90 hours a week for a few weeks,” Ian said. “If I was on tour, not at home, and had nothing else to do, I would sit in my hotel room… and play on the website hour after hour. It was so much fun.”
Sometimes, he would even play cards during concerts.
"I'll be playing in a Sunday tournament, and it'll be really deep... and then the band is going to come on, and I'll think, what are we going to do? So I'll actually bring my laptop on stage, and I'll just sit there playing (guitar), with my laptop right next to me, wherever my guitar technician has set up... and then I'll run back (to ask) what happened (in the tournament)."
"A few times he would actually participate in the games and even helped me win a pot. So if I win any prize money, I'll share it with him."
Ian was riding high. He played family games with A-list celebrities like Steve Martin and was ready to extend his sponsorship deal with Ultimate Bet. But the day that would later be forever etched in the minds of poker players as "Black Friday" was fast approaching.
Want to transform your strategy from "knowing how to use it" to "making stable profits"?
If you have already mastered the basics, the following practical strategies will truly impact your profitability:
How to play Texas Hold'em after the flop? A complete guide to PFR heads-up pot C-bet and turn strategies.
Texas Hold'em Defense Tutorial: How can a Pre-Flop Caller (PFC) counter a C-bet? Complete Practical Strategy Analysis
Texas Hold'em Double Barrel Strategy: When is the second shot most profitable?
Texas Hold'em Bluff Strategy: When to Bluff? A Complete Semi-Bluff Guide
Texas Hold'em Delay C-bet Strategy: When Should You Delay Your Attack?
Texas Hold'em Check-Raise Strategy: The Core Skills of Offensive Defense
Texas Hold'em Multi-Player Pot Strategies: Correct Playing Techniques and Avoidance Guidelines for Pots with 3 or More Players
Texas Hold'em 3-bet pot strategy: How to simplify decision-making and control SPR after the flop?
Texas Hold'em Pot, Effective Stack, and SPR Judgment: A Complete Strategy Tutorial on Pot and Effective Stack
Texas Hold'em Range Tutorial: How to use Range to judge your opponents and make decisions?
Hunter Poker offers comprehensive strategy tutorials and hand analysis to help players upgrade from "reading cards" to "reading ranges" and "making decisions," truly achieving long-term profitability.
▶️ In Facebook Follow Hunter Poker.
📘 In Youtube Follow Hunter Poker.