Mr. Fro-Poker himself, Alex Jacob is the inspiration for this site (in fact, he may have owned it himself at one time).

His poker skills and huge bushy halo of hair (though tamed a bit since his premiere seasons) make an immediate impression, but the combination of aggressive unpredictability and courteous sportsmanship tend to be what players and spectators remember most…well, that and the fact that he’d won over $2.5 million by the time he turned 25 (but none of it from online slots).

You might expect as much from a Yale grad (or maybe not; GWB was a Yale grad too). Jacob was still studying Math and Economics at the Ivy League university when Positively Fifth’s Street‘s James McManus wrote about him in a 2004 Esquire article entitled “Further Adventures in Poker” (specifically, he lost a bunch of money to him and cautioned the poker world to remember his name!).

As an undergraduate at Yale, Jacob built up his skills and his bankroll by playing in the regular no-limit hold’em game at Trumbull College, as well as with increasing stakes in online casino USA poker rooms and live tournaments. Yale’s Peter A. Fabrizio Memorial Poker Classic provided his first big win in 2003, but he played in far more exotic locations — Vienna, Monte Carlo, Paris, the Bahamas, basically anywhere that (unlike the US) he could play before he turned 21.

With his majority and graduation under his belt, Jacobs hit the WPT and WSOP pretty hard for a new kid. The WPT Foxwoods Poker Classic was a particular triumph, earning him a silver spot second only to Victor Ramdin. The following year was his best ever; 2006 brought his total over $1.6 million, cashing in nine tournaments, two of which saw him at the final table, plus one in first place — namely, the United States Poker Championship main event.

The next few years saw plenty of respectable showings, but overall nothing as spectacular as in earlier days. While still active in the 2010 WSOP, Jacob’s performance has mostly kept him from the limelight.