Matt Giannetti, a 2011 November Niner, is originally from New York and attended the University of Texas. 2003 was the year when his poker journey began. However, it took him three years to discover his talent for poker. The year he turned 21, he moved to Las Vegas and ever since he has been a regular at the NLHE and PLO cash games.
Back in 2003, during the Moneymaker boom, Matt and his friends started playing poker 4-5 times a week. That fall, the New York native enrolled at the University of Texas, choosing the challenging computer engineering major. “Poker started taking off during my second semester of my freshman year,” recalls Giannetti. “Every spare moment, I would be playing poker online. I would be constantly thinking about poker.” However, Matt comes from a family with a great history in education, with an elder brother having graduated at the University of Michigan, and a younger one at the University of Georgia. This meant that Matt was disciplined with his studies and did not drop out of college. Nevertheless, he finally made the decision to go pro, forgoing his academics after his sophomore year.
There was no doubt in his mind that Vegas was the place for him to go to turn pro. Things went well until he went on a pretty major downswing. “I began to take winning for granted and instead of trying to evolve my game, I got into the club scene,” Giannetti revealed. “Looking back, I wasted many opportunities to play in good cash games … where I could not only win money, but also remain sharp in my game.”
Although Matt is known for his cash game skills, he has also cashed in several tournaments. His very first was at the 2006 Five-Star World Poker Classic in Las Vegas, where he collected a paycheck of $12,605 for an 8th place in the $2,000 NLHE event. During that year he also cashed the WSOP Main Event, as well as at the WPT World Poker Finals in Mashantucket. The cash Matt is most famous for is when he finished in 4th place in the 2011 WSOP No Limit Hold’em Championship for a whopping $3,012,700.
