Scott Ian: From Ultimate Axeman to Team UB Member
If you had a time machine and if you’d gone back to 1981 and if you’d told a 17-year-old Scott Ian that he was going to one day have a second career playing for an online poker room’s team and making great money doing it, he probably would have stared at you for a second before going back to helping make Anthrax one of the biggest and most-respected bands in the metal scene. In the past several years, the metal god has become one of the brightest stars in the poker scene, competing in massive events like the World Series of Poker as well as smaller tournaments like UltimateBet’s highly-feted Aruba Poker Classic.
“Compared to my day job, poker is relaxing,” Scott jokes on the UltimateBet site. He began playing in 2007 and “sucked,” as he describes his ability at the time. After becoming friendly with members of UltimateBet’s Team UB, he soon received a crash course in playing poker from pros like Debo34, Poker H0, and Shawn Rice and became a dangerous competitor at tables both real and virtual.
Scott’s built a poker-playing style that takes bits and pieces from the people he’s learned from and added aggressiveness, much like how Anthrax used the music of Judas Priest and Ted Nugent as a starting point and added an edge not had by their peers. Since first joining TeamUB, he’s chalked up an impressive record, generally finishing “in the money” in tournaments where other players would balk at the competition. He took away $21,365 from the most recent World Series of Poker, finishing 637th.
In the meantime, still manages to make sure he’s one of the most iconic figures in heavy metal, touring heavily with the still-rocking Anthrax, playing in other bands, and even writing a comic book for DC Comics. Anthrax just released Worship Music and continues to tour to arenas throughout the globe with Scott taking time at each gig to play a few hands of online poker against his friends and fans alike.
