Antanas Guoga, widely known in poker circles as Tony G, was born on December 17th 1973 in Kaunas, Lithuania. When he was a child Antanas Guoga learned quickly the complexity of chess while he was playing with kids twice his age. At the age of seven Antanas Guoga started attending a special chess school. It was then thet he discovered his passion - the thing which was going to overset his life - competition. He loved playing and loved winning when the game was hard. Antanas Gouga was also the Rubik’s Cube champion of Lithuania.
Antanas Guoga was 11 years old when his family moved to Melbourne, Australia. Life there was better and easier, but Guoga never quite fit in. He started looking around for a job, and after trying many different ways of making money - washing cars, mowing lawns, Antanas Guoga began taking sports bets. He started playing poker when he was at the age of 18. When he managed to save up $ 200,000 Antanas Guoga headed to Las Vegas, hoping to become a professional poker player. At the beginning of his poker career, he was often forced to use fake IDs to enter the casinos, as it was necessary to be 21 years old to be legally allowed to play. Overrating himself or underrating his opponents, Antanas Guoga lost hundreds of dollars, and because of that he returned to Australia for a short while. Antanas Guoga had not returned to Australia to give up poker, but to begin looking for ways to improve his play. He decided to try his luck in Europe, and finally started seeing some results. Soon he was earning around $7.5k per month playing part time in the local casinos. Antanas Gouga became a regular at the Victoria Casino in London. His next step after London was Vienna. There he earned his well known nickname when he registered for poker games as “Tony G”. Soon this name was on everybody’s lips. Some of the other nicknames of Antanas Gouga are The Australian Airbag and the Mouth from Down Under.
Now Antanas Gouga is well-known with his impeccable ability to get under his opponent’s skin in a very strong manner getting them to make awful calls. There are millions of videos in the internet showing how bad Antanas Guoga can be at the table. He thinks of himself as talkative at the table, but there are many people who can say that he is a “hyperaggresive smack-talker” whose brashness can throw a poker professional off his game. Even if Antanas Guoga can sometimes get out of lines, he says that this is just a part of the game.
Antanas Guoga currently is still residing in Melbourne, Australia. When he is not at the poker table, he likes to travel, especially to Japan. He has already spent a lot of time there and is impressed of the county’s culture. Another of his hobbies is exercising. Some people like Tony G, others don’t and even fear him, but we can not deny his results. As a man who never give up his dream, even after going broken many times he has become one of the world’s best poker players.