David Baker (poker player, born 1986)

David "Bakes" Baker (born October 17, 1986) is an American professional poker player who has won a World Series of Poker bracelet and appeared at four World Series of Poker final tables. He also has a Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP) championship. Baker currently has over US$2 million in tournament winnings. In order to avoid confusion with David "ODB" Baker, he is listed in the World Series of Poker (WSOP) database by the name "David Bakes Baker" and listed at Bluff Magazine as "David (Bakes) Baker". Baker, who is from Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, attended Michigan State University before taking up poker.

Career

Hailing from Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, Baker began playing poker in high school. During his freshman year at Michigan State, he played small-stakes games with future WSOP bracelet winners Justin Scott and Dean Hamrick. He spent two years at Michigan State. After getting distracted from classwork by poker, he began to play online and moved to Miami to enroll at the School of Audio Engineering. He first visited Las Vegas at age twenty and studied poker under Vanessa Selbst, eventually becoming a boarder at her house. After turning 21, he was staked to play high stakes at Foxwood Casino by Shaun Deeb, Thayer Rasmussen, Vivek Rajkumar, Ray Coburn, Jonathan Aguiar, Adam Shuman and others, known as Team Waffle Crush. Later, he moved to backing by Tom Dwan