David Einhorn is an American part-time poker player and also the President of Greenlight Capital, Inc., a value-oriented investment management firm. With his enigmatic investing skills, he built the $1 million hedge fund, Greenlight Capital, into a $4 billion investment in just ten years. Besides being a fund manager, David Einhorn also sits on several boards for organizations like the Robin Hood Leadership Council and the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research. Until he resigned in 2007, he was a part of the New Century Financial board as well.
David Einhorn entered the poker circuit only in 2004 and has cashed in huge amounts of prize money in just two No-Limit Hold’em events. Though he rarely enters poker tournaments, his poker skills equal most of the top players in the world. In the No-Limit Hold'em event of the New England Poker Classic Main Event, which was held in April 2004, David Einhorn finished twenty-fourth, cashing in $6,075.
Later in 2006, he made $659,730 in live tournament earnings at the final table of the 37th Annual World Series of Poker, Event 39 - WSOP No Limit Hold'em Championship. Some of the best poker mathematicians in New York, including Dan Harrington, T.J. Cloutier, and Clonie Gowen, attended this charity event. At the final table, David Einhorn played with Jamie Gold, the winner of the 2006 World Series of Poker Main Event, and was eventually knocked out of the game by him.
He donated his earnings from the tournament to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research. David Einhorn chose to give his winnings to this foundation not just because he sits on the board, but also because his grandfather suffered from Parkinson’s disease. In an interview after making the final table with Jamie Gold, David Einhorn said that both poker and investing are games of incomplete information. He believes that everyone has a certain set of facts and they are all looking for situations where they have the edge, whether the edge is psychological or statistical. He called his two weeks of poker at the Main Event "a real easy, fun way to raise money" for the foundation. David Einhorn also contributed $200,000 during a charity auction held for the Glide Memorial Church, a San Francisco-based nonprofit organization that runs programs for the poor and homeless, to win a lunch with investment guru Warren Buffet.
David Einhorn published a book titled Fooling Some of the People All of the Time. The book gives an account of his six-year odyssey holding a short position with the small-business lender, Allied Capital (ALD). It also offers broad lessons with important implications for investors, discusses the proper functioning of capital markets, and provides a unique view on the type of strategies undertaken by highly successful investors. David Einhorn is quiet unsure of his entry back into the poker circuit as his presidential role demands much of his time, but he states that he would love to play in more poker tournaments.