It was June 29, 2006 when online poker pro Brandon Cantu’s life changed forever. After spending $1,5000 to play in Event #2 of the WSOP two days earlier, he was now at the final table of a massive No Limit Texas Hold ‘EM event that had a prize pool of over $3.7m dollars. He was in a showdown against Mark Ly, who’d made a name for himself that year and in a stunning series of plays, he undercut his fellow up-and-comer and walked away with a bracelet and $757,000 to call his own.

It was at that moment that Brandon Cantu decided to become a poker pro and signed up with UltimateBet.

Cantu’s poker origins are, perhaps surprisingly if you’ve seen him pay, humble: “My grandfather helped shape my poker game. However, as I grew older I played with friends and shaped my game through repetitious sessions. I am completely self-taught. No books, no training sites,” he said in an interview with UltimateBet. It also makes sense that Cantu worked in the high-stress, high-stakes world of real estate investment before the 2006 WSO; his aggressive style and ice-cold demeanor comes straight from the boardrooms and construction sites.

Cantu earned his second bracelet in 2009 at the $1,500 pot-limit Omaha eight-or better event. There, he walked away from the table with $228,867 and bragging rights over Lee Watkinson. In addition to his WSOP bracelets, Cantu has cashed multiple times on the World Poker Tour, taking 18^th and 19^th places at the Festa Al ago V in 2006 and the World Poker challenge in 2007, respectively. It was in March 2008 that he won his first WPT title in the Bay 101 Shooting Star Championship, earning a cool $1,000,000 and $30,000 in additional bounties for taking out six other earmarked players.

He’s won over $3,000,000 playing poker with over half of that coming from the World Series of Poker, and The Bounty Hunter is just getting started. Don’t be surprised if you hear more from the man, who’s happy that poker has become the huge phenomenon it has: “I believe that expansion of both numbers and interest surrounding the game of poker can never be a bad thing.”