Poker Broker

Steve Dannenmann

A Maryland mortgage broker’s gamble and a trip to Las Vegas earned him more than $4 million. Steve Dannenmann, CPA, financial advisor and mortgage broker, said he took the chance of a lifetime. With a $10,000 entry fee and his amateur poker skills, he headed to the 2005 World Series of Poker — and was able to walk away with a cool $4.25 million in prize money. Dannenmann, 39, of Severn, Md., told MortgageDaily.com he had played Texas Hold Em poker for about a year and a half before entering the annual tournament and beating out more than 5600 people to take second place. After taxes, he said he split the remaining $2.6 million with his partner/investor who had given him $5,000 to apply to the entry fee. “We didn’t really talk about what we would do with the winnings,” Dannenmann explained. “But it was a gentleman’s agreement that we split the money in half.” He said for the tournament, he set his goals “to have fun, get on television, and make it to the money” and after applying the same principles he uses in his financial planning practice he achieved those goals.

The four aces of financial success, Dannenmann said are “borrow from the best, write and prioritize a plan, practice small, and build on what works.”“You are investing $10,000 in a particular hand, like a piece of real estate,” he explains of his poker strategy. “If you are dealt an Ace-King, you think it’s a premium hand, but an Ace-Jack might give you some problems or a worse hand is like a poorer piece of real estate.”

After earning his CPA certificate in 1989, Dannenmann began his own CPA firm and has built up a working clientele of 2000 clients, he said. About three years ago he added loan origination to his financial planning tools and became a part-time loan officer for Primary Residential Mortgage, Inc. in Pasadena, Md., a net branch whose parent company is located in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Dannenmann told MortgageDaily.com he has an unlimited amount of people who are in need of a mortgage, including new purchases and those with bad credit. On average he said he writes 25 to 30 loans a year, with an average loan amount of $250,000.

He said most all of the loans he writes are fixed rate, unless someone has bad credit he suggests an ARM and then they refinance in the next couple years.

Primary Residential Loan Executive Steve Kettinger said he handles Dannenmann’s paperwork, ensuring it gets processed along with other CPAs that originate for the company.

Kettinger said he was a bit surprised that Dannenmann placed second. “With 5600 people (in the tournament) it would surprise anybody that someone you know would win.”

Maybe he should have had more faith in Dannenmann’s poker skills.

Kettinger told MortgageDaily.com that before Dannenmann left for the tournament, he offered Kettinger a 10 percent cut of his potential prize winnings if he would invest $1,000 towards the entry fee.

Unfortunately, Kettinger declined.

For now, Dannenmann said he still plays poker regularly, just in smaller tournaments. And he has created a Web site so he can keep in touch with the fans his success has created.