Steve Brecher (born 1945) is an American professional

poker Poker is a family of comparing card games in which players wager over which hand is best according to that specific game's rules. It is played worldwide, however in some places the rules may vary. While the earliest known form of the game w ...

player.

Poker career

In 1999, Brecher placed 8th in the

World Series of Poker The World Series of Poker (WSOP) is a series of poker tournaments held annually in Paradise, Nevada and, since 2004, sponsored by Caesars Entertainment. It dates its origins to 1970, when Benny Binion invited seven of the best-known poker p ...

$2,500 No-Limit Hold'em event for $15,000. In 2004, he reached the final table of the

World Poker Tour The World Poker Tour (WPT) is an internationally televised gaming and entertainment brand. Since 2002, the World Poker Tour has operated a series of international poker tournaments and associated television series broadcasting playdown and the ...

$25,000 No Limit Championship, finishing in 6th place and winning $232,000. In 2005, he finished 3rd in the $9,700 No Limit Hold'em event at the

United States Poker Championship The United States Poker Championship (USPC) was a major annual stop on the poker tournament tour. This event was held at the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The series started in 1996, took one year off in 1997, and ran every year fr ...

, pocketing $218,000. In 2009, Brecher took his first major tournament title by winning the WPT

Bay 101 Bay 101 is a cardroom in San Jose, California. Like other California cardrooms, Bay 101 offers poker cash games and tournaments as well as special "California" style table games. Bay 101 is perhaps best known for hosting the Bay 101 Shooting St ...

Shooting Star tournament. He beat over 300 other players to win more than $1 Million, defeating

Kathy Liebert Kathleen H. Liebert (born October 1, 1967 in Tennessee) is an American professional poker player. Poker Liebert started her professional poker career as a prop player in Colorado. She would later go on to enter tournaments and she won the fi ...

heads up after the longest final table in WPT history. He finished 31st in the 2011

Main Event, winning $242,636. As of November 2015, his career cashes were $3.0 million.

Computer programming career

Before turning his hand to professional poker, Brecher was a computer programmer and writer who was instrumental in creating some of the earliest popular programs (and their product categories) for the

Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software en ...

platform. He wrote ''Suitcase'', the font management program for the Mac, which was originally self-published under the brand Software Supply, later distributed by

Fifth Generation Systems Fifth Generation Systems, Inc., was a computer security company founded October 1984 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, United States by Robert Mitchell, Leroy Mitchell, Roger Ivey, and Bruce Ray. All four later left the company. Fifth Generation's initi ...

, and eventually acquired by

Extensis Celartem, Inc., doing business as Extensis, is a software company based in Portland, Oregon. History Extensis and its parent company ''CreativePro.com'' were sold to ''ImageX'' in year 2000, which in turn sold Extensis to Japanese content-manage ...

, which still publishes a (greatly improved and rewritten) version of the program more than 20 years after Brecher's original release. He also, together with Billy Steinberg, wrote ''Pyro'', the original Mac

screen saver Screen Savers or screensaver or ''variation'', may refer to: * Screensaver A screensaver (or screen saver) is a computer program that blanks the display screen or fills it with moving images or patterns when the computer has been idle for a d ...

application. In addition to application software, Brecher was a contributor to the FreePPP project, which brought Macintosh computers onto the Internet, and developed low-level driver software for some of the earliest Macintosh

hard disk drive A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magn ...

s. In the 1980s and early 1990s, Brecher was regarded in technology circles as a "programmer's programmer", and was a Contributing Editor of

MacTech ''MacTech'' is the journal of Apple technology, a monthly magazine for consultants, IT Pros, system administrators, software developers, and other technical users of the Apple Macintosh line of computers. The magazine was called "MacTech" for it ...

magazine, for which he wrote the ''Ask Professor Mac'' column, and answered technical questions from readers. His later interest in professional gambling was foreshadowed by his 1980 book, ''Beating the Races with a Computer''.

Miscellaneous

Brecher holds an FAA Airline Transport Pilot certificate, and during 2009–2012 flew himself to poker tournaments around the country from his plane's bases in

Reno, Nevada Reno ( ) is a city in the northwest section of the U.S. state of Nevada, along the Nevada-California border, about north from Lake Tahoe, known as "The Biggest Little City in the World". Known for its casino and tourism industry, Reno is the c ...

and

Carson City, Nevada Carson City is an independent city and the capital of the U.S. state of Nevada. As of the 2020 census, the population was 58,639, making it the sixth largest city in Nevada. The majority of the city's population lives in Eagle Valley, on th ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Brecher, Steve 1945 births Living people American poker players World Poker Tour winners People from Las Vegas