PLAYER PROFILE – Ted “Professor Backwards” Forrest
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Poker has been a popular game for centuries, and its skill-based nature only adds to its appeal. The game’s competitive scene gained added traction in the 1970s with the creation of the World Series of Poker (WSOP), which is now widely considered one of poker’s main attractions. Over the years, various moments, stories and players have helped elevate poker into an even more beloved pastime. To this day, countless new players are striving to become one of the best and to play poker professionally. Many established pros have stood out above the rest and will forever be remembered as a part of the game’s rich history. Today, we’ll talk about one such player: Ted “Professor Backwards” Forrest.
Player Overview
Ted Forrest is an American professional poker player known for his impressive tournament career. In 1993, his debut year at the WSOP, he earned three bracelets, becoming one of only six players in history to do so. He has a long history of tournament success, with over $6.3 million in tournament winnings including having won six WSOP bracelets. Outside of the WSOP, Forrest has made it to five World Poker Tour final tables, winning one of them. He has appeared twice on High Stakes Poker, a televised poker cash game. He has a win in the Professional Poker Tour and a win in the National Heads-Up Poker Championship, defeating many famous players, including Erik Seidel and Chris Ferguson. All his success is heightened by his unorthodox playstyle, which differs from nearly every other poker pro. This has earned him the nickname “Professor Backwards” for his propensity of doing the opposite of what most players expect.
Early Life
Ted Forrest was born on September 24, 1964, in Syracuse, New York. He was a superb athlete in many sports, including track and field, wrestling and basketball. A lover of the outdoors from an early age, he once went on a solo trip to the Grand Canyon when he was 16. Forrest spent weeks camping in isolation and didn’t tell anyone, not even his family. His journey home was wild, narrowly escaping from park rangers and getting robbed by a heroin addict. These kinds of situations helped to solidify his quick thinking skills and mental fortitude, which he would use extensively in his poker career.
Eventually, like countless other aspiring poker pros, he moved to Vegas. There, he built up enough money to pay for college, attending Le Moyne in upstate New York. However, he dropped out shortly before finishing, but has no regrets, stating, “I ended up dropping out just nine credits short of graduation, and it’s probably one of the better choices I’ve made in my life. If I’d graduated from college, I might have taken some job making $36,000 a year. I’m happy with the alternative route I’ve taken.”
Poker Career
Forrest’s early poker career had a lot of ups and downs. The turning point came in 1991 when he found a backer to play Razz poker against other wealthy yet inexperienced poker players. He usually played Seven-Card Stud so he fell behind early on. Thankfully he persevered and at the end of a grueling 25-hour session, he walked away with over $20,000. This was the start of his poker career, thanks to the boost in his bankroll and in his confidence.
In 1993, wins in the Omaha, Razz, and Seven-card Stud events of the WSOP netted him over $300,000 and three bracelets. In the late 90s, he quit tournaments to focus primarily on high-stakes cash games but returned in 2004 to claim two more bracelets, one in Hold’em and another in Seven-Card Stud.
Venturing beyond the WSOP for a while, Ted won the 2006 National Heads-Up Poker Championship, getting through household names like Erik Seidel, Chad Brown, Ernie Dureck, Sam Farha, Shahram Sheikhan and Chris Ferguson to win $500,000. In 2007, he won the Bay 101 Shooting Stars Tournament, triumphing over J. J. Liu in the longest heads-up duel in World Poker Tour history, claiming $1.1 million at the end.
In 2014, he beat poker legend Phil Hellmuth at the WSOP Razz event, earning his sixth WSOP bracelet.
Living up to the nickname “Professor Backwards,” Forrest’s unique poker style sees him raise when other people would call and vice-versa. He is an advocate of limping. While many players see it as a “cardinal sin” of poker, he believes it should be employed far more often.
Prop Betting History
Forrest is almost universally-liked among the poker community for a few reasons. He doesn’t seem overly concerned with money, having a very charitable nature. His tendency to back players even when they were losing has earned him a reputation as a “business man of poker.”
He also has a penchant for taking ridiculous and dangerous prop bets almost no other player would seriously consider. Someone once bet Forrest couldn’t do a standing backflip at the WSOP, and he proved them wrong for $10,000. He won $7,000 for running a marathon outdoors during 115-degree heat, in just under six hours, suffering from severe heat exhaustion as an unwelcome side effect. Forrest once permanently injured his arm and lost $10,000 while attempting a bet to do 50 bench presses of 225 pounds each, over the span of 24 hours.
He’s not the type to back down from heads-up competition, either, playing high-stakes games against billionaires like Andy Beal. He played against fellow poker pro Barry Greenstein in a month-long Chinese poker game, coming out with $1.5 million at the end of the session.
