Alex “Diesel” Bolotin was born in 1980 in Minsk, Belarus and has been playing cards all his life, but started seriously playing poker in 2003. He moved to the U.S. in 1992, at which time he supported himself financially by playing Russian card games with his class mates.

It was in 2006 that Bolotin made his stylish entrance into the live tournament poker world, when he amassed over $100,000 in earnings within 4 months, including $78,292 from a 5^th place finish in the 37^th World Series of Poker $2,500 Short Handed No Limit Hold’em Event. 2007 proved to be one hell of a year for his career too; since that was the year he won a total of $1,105,797, multiplying by ten what he earned the year before. It was also during 2007 that he recorded his biggest cash ever, acquiring $504,686 from a runner-up at the 38^th WSOP $5,000 No Limit Hold’em Six Handed Event. To top it off he made 5 WSOP cashes during that year alone.

Alex didn’t show any signs of slowing down in 2008, which he started off by winning a first place in the $500 No Limit Hold’em Event on the 16^th of January for $102,213. He also final tabled three WSOP events that year.

In 2009, Bolotin received a lot of attention for not only winning the $5,000 WSOP Ante Up for Africa charity tournament, but also for graciously donating half of his winnings to the event’s cause. When asked why he decided to give away half of his $177,000 to the charities being promoted by the event, he laudably stated, “It’s a good cause and I think they need the money more than we do”.

Between 2006 and 2012 Bolotin amassed $2,184,127 in poker winnings, virtually all of it having come from live tournaments. Just over half of his winnings during that time period came from WSOP cashes alone. Alex has reached first place in both the “Belarus All Time Money List” and the “Belarus Number Of Cashes List”.

Alex’s ambition is to become the best poker player in the world. His favourite music is Hip-Hop and he is currently residing in Brooklyn, New York. You can often find him playing in high stakes No Limit Hold’em tournaments.