Steve Albini Produced Some of the Biggest Records — and Won Two World Series of Poker Bracelets

"Everything in my life comes in pieces, in parts. Poker is one part of my life,” said Steve after winning a tournament.

May 8 2024, Published 2:52 p.m. ET

Legendary music producer (or recording engineer, he hated the term producer) and opinionated punk Steve Albini unexpectedly passed away at the age of 61 on May 7, 2024. His cause of death was reported as a heart attack.

While most casual music fans might know of him as the guy who produced Nirvana’s In Utero and the best records from the Pixies, PJ Harvey, and other influential rock artists, some hardcore gamblers might have known him as a peer.

Steve Albini was an award-winning poker player.

While he’ll be remembered for being behind the board for iconic albums and his Electrical Audio studio, he might not have been able to make some of those records and pay some of those studio bills without his poker winnings.

In a 2018 piece in The Ringer published after Steve won his first World Series of Poker bracelet, he explained how the game is different than his day job: “I feel like the parts of my brain that I’m not using in my day-to-day life come into play. I don’t do a lot of calculating when I’m going through a normal day. You’re doing at least some sort of rudimentary math in every hand of poker. When you’re playing cards you have to do a lot of sort of prediction of behavior."

Steve received his second bracelet in June 2022. “Everything in my life comes in pieces, in portions. Poker is one part of my existence," he informed WSOP.com after his six-digit prize. "When I'm enjoying poker, I try to decide to it. I attempt to take it critically. I try to make sure I commit the attention to it that it deserves as an profession. But it is just part of my 12 months. I handiest play tournaments on the World Series of Poker. I play cash video games informally in Chicago. It's a part of my livelihood, but it is not my career.”

You can see Steve’s elation in a video WSOP additionally launched after Steve gained $196,089. Steve received a overall of $370,045 in World Series of Poker tournaments in his lifetime. Obviously there’s no overall of all of his total wins in space video games.

If you’re inquisitive about Steve Albini’s poker guidelines, he shared some in a Reddit AMA.

Twelve years ago Steve did an extensive Reddit AMA. When asked about what forums and books he’d suggest for an green player, he gave a very helpful reaction. "The forums at twoplustwo.com are fantastic resources with some of the best minds in the game sharing a lot of information. I also like the more detailed content at Cardrunners.com and Nutblocker.com."

His ebook response was simply as useful. “I'd stick to stuff at the 2+2 imprint to start, particularly their game-specific 'for advanced gamers' books, all golden. For Holdem I really like Dan Harrington's tournament books and the brand new Jonathan Little books, however I don't play both Holdem or tournaments that much, and there are better folks to invite than me. I love Bill Chen's The Mathematics of Poker and David Sklansky's The Theory of Poker because they teah general concepts that you'll adapt to different video games and disciplines."

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