Henry Orenstein
How a Holocaust survivor transformed the world of poker.
The first impression one gets of Henry Orenstein is that he is an impatient man. Even at age 83, he has things to do and places to go. He is on the phone talking with a reporter. Can they do the interview right now? Henry doesn’t want to wait. The reporter pleads for time to prepare himself, since he didn’t know until just this moment that the proposed interview would happen.
The octogenarian sighs and agrees to a two-hour delay. That’s his style. No time to waste. He thinks quickly.
But speed notwithstanding, it would be a mistake to believe that Henry Orenstein is anything other than a person of incredible tenacious patience. With a combination of vision and never-ending persistence, he’s become a self-made millionaire who has almost single-handedly changed the world of poker. Indeed, the current poker revolution probably would never have happened without Henry’s contributions. And poker is just one area of his prodigious accomplishments. Before his involvement with gaming, he was a legendary toymaker (Transformers being one of his greatest achievements). Prior to that he was forced to play the ultimate game. Henry was imprisoned by the Nazis during World War II, and he survived the Holocaust. He has had an incredible life.
A Passion For Poker
“Twenty-five years ago I used to play a lot of chess,” says Henry. “I got headaches playing, so my wife suggested I try poker. She said, ‘You’ll probably be good.’ And that is how it started.”
At first it was home games with friends. Then he played at the famed Bicycle Casino near Los Angeles. After that came regular trips to Atlantic City and Henry was hooked. For most players, that would be the end of it, just a lot of casual poker—but not for Henry Orenstein.
In 1996, at age 71, he competed in the World Series of Poker $5,000 seven-card stud championship. Henry took the gold bracelet (top prize) and $130,000. That was nice, yet he had even bigger plans on the horizon.
“I was watching ESPN on TV, the World Series of Poker, but at that time they didn’t show closed cards. I remember five hands in a row where somebody bet at the end and nobody called. It was boring, hand after hand and you didn’t see what was happening. So a thought struck me that if we could expose the player’s closed cards on TV, that would make the game far more interesting.”
Being a professional toymaker, Henry went right to work on a design.
“For that one it wasn’t a big deal. I knew pretty much we could do it. I designed the table with a window cut out in the table, and the players put their cards on the window. Underneath we had a camera.”
And that is how Henry invented and patented the “hole cam.” To this day, all poker shows on television use his original designs and most of them pay for the privilege (WSOP being the only exception). A significant part of Henry’s fortune comes from royalties on his patent.
But the entrepreneur wasn’t satisfied even with that.
“I had some ideas. With Poker Superstars, we took the best players in the world, and we had them compete against each other, all pros.”
Besides Poker Superstars, Henry’s television programmes include Intercontinental Poker Championship and High Stakes Poker.
These days poker celebrities are everywhere promoting everything from websites to clothing. So it is hard to remember that at the beginning of the poker boom there were serious disagreements between some programme producers and professional players over financial issues such as celebrity endorsements. Some players were drawing enormous audiences based on their personalities and playing styles. So they felt that they deserved extra opportunities for compensation, more than just winning tournament prizes. Henry understood the power of poker-celebrities such as Gus Hansen, Johnny Chan, and Phil Ivey. He built his programmes around them, and this changed the paradigm for the whole industry.
Henry recalls, “Antonio [Esfandiari] came up to me. He didn’t know me at the time. He said, ‘Mr. Orenstein, I just want to thank you for what you did. Because of you I used to be just a magician earning a living. Now, because of you, I am a millionaire.’” Then the entrepreneur proudly adds, “I’ve made well over 100 [millionaires].”
It is amazing when you consider that the man who is now creating millionaires was once imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp. And it is all the more amazing when you realize that Henry’s natural genius for playing games is what kept him alive.
Strategy For Survival
Henry Orenstein was born in Poland in 1923. He and his family lived a mostly comfortable upper-middle class life until the Germans invaded in 1939. Being Jewish was the equivalent of a death sentence at that time. Henry was a Jew, so he and his family lived life on the run from the Nazis. There was little food, sometimes no water. Hiding in closets, cellars and ditches, he watched his parents and siblings waste away from exposure and hunger. This lasted for months until his family was deceived by an offer of amnesty.
In his autobiography I Shall Live, Henry later wrote, “We were worn out, beaten. The promise of an amnesty didn’t fool us, but we decided to go to the jail anyway, to put an end to our misery.”
Henry’s worst fears were realized when his parents were led away to execution. For the next several years he passed through a series of concentration camps. He suffered through beatings, malnourishment, and horrific mistreatment. What kept him going was his steely determination. Poker is only a trifling contest when it is compared to life and death. But reading I Shall Survive, and hearing Henry’s comments about the book, it is easy to see how he applied his natural talents at game theory to the struggle for survival. He used classic game strategies. He was (as the poker saying goes) tight but aggressive. He took calculated risks for advantage, but otherwise conserved his resources whenever possible. Patient and relentless, Henry was aiming to outlast his opponents.
The Big Bluff
“Some German professors who were working at that time [in 1943] for the SS were trying to find the best way to utilize the slave labor that they had in the East. … Because the Russians were approaching, they knew their jobs would be no longer there. So they came up with an idea of getting some Jewish scientists in concentration camps, and using them to help the German war effort. A number of Jews like me registered just to play for time. We figured in the meantime, if we were scientists they wouldn’t kill us. There were 50 of us. Then more joined. After the professors found out that we were really not scientists, they had to decide whether to tell the SS and then risk themselves being drafted into the German army, or just play along and make believe that we were scientists and give us phony work, which they did.”
It was a daring deception, very much in the spirit of Schindler’s List, and it may have saved Henry’s life. The respite he was given from manual labour allowed him to conserve his strength for a final ordeal.
“We were on a death march from April 20th [1945]. Anyone who couldn’t walk was shot.” Hundreds of his fellow prisoners perished this way, just days before liberation. On May 2nd, the Allies arrived and the SS guards fled. Henry was finally free.
Transformers and Other Toys
After the war, Henry came to the United States and got into the toy business. Some of his better known products included Johnny Lightning race cars (which once competed with Hot Wheels for toy- automobile supremacy), the first line of Sesame Street toys, and his most famous product, Transformers.
“I found them [Transformers] in a little showroom in a toy fair in 1983. Then I went to Japan. I knew the president of the company. He was a friend of mine, so I convinced him to take it away from his own subsidiary and give it to Hasbro. And so my arrangement with Hasbro is that I’m getting royalty on all the toys and any product that is licensed—it’s a very sweet deal.”
Henry uses the money he earns from his various royalties for philanthropy. To this day, he still personally reviews every case. And of course, he enjoys playing high-stakes poker. You can find him most days at the Trump Taj Mahal playing 400-800 Stud.
The Strategy of a Winner
What is Henry’s greatest talent as a poker player?
“Reading people. Some people are very easy to read. Forgetting about tells, some people when they look at the seventh card, the last card, you can see disappointment in their face. I won’t have a hand [so I will bluff bet], and they just give it away. That is Number One. Number Two is knowing the odds. Let’s say there is a $10,000 pot and the chances are 8:1 that I will make a gutshot. I’ll put the bet in. I’ll call because the seventh card is 1 in 4 depending on the number of cards that went out. Depending on the money in the pot it’s a good shot. I’m very good at odds.”
Yes, clearly he is. After nearly eight and a half decades, Henry is still calculating the odds and patiently churning out winsl Basil Nestor is author of The Smarter Bet Guide to Poker, The Unofficial Guide to Casino Gambling, and other comprehensive gambling guides. Got a question? Visit SmarterBet.com and drop him a line.
(c) copyright 2007 Basil Nestor
Be the first to comment on this
If you are a Gambling.com member, please login at the top left of this page.
If you are not a Gambling.com member, please complete our sign up form—membership is free and it takes just a minute or two to sign up.
Bookmark this page: (What are these?)