Ylon Schwartz(credit: shipthecheese.com)
Ylon Schwartz has been hustling games on the streets of New York since he was 13 years old. One of his favorite sayings and the name of his official web site is “ship the cheese”. Since money is called ‘cheese’ on the street and ‘ship it’ just feels ‘good’, it’s just “Ylon being Ylon,” but who is Ylon Schwartz really?
As we mentioned, Ylon, who goes by the nickname “TenthPlanet”, is a native New Yorker. Born and raised, he currently lives in Brooklyn. He’s been playing poker for more than 15 years already and has 11 WSOP cashes and two on the World Series of Poker Circuit. At 38 years old, he’s considered middle aged between the young guns at the table and the ‘oldster’ Dennis Phillips, who’s in his early 50s.
A gamer by nature, Schwartz has played backgammon, chess, darts, pool and golf. He’s highly competitive worked his way up to the ranking of chess master but moved on to poker because it’s more profitable. He became a fixture at East Coast tournaments making bank at tourneys such as the World Poker Finals (Foxwoods), US Poker Championships, Trump Classic, Bellagio Poker Open and other World Poker Tour Events.
Ylon has also found success online, specializing in MTTs (multi-table tournaments) and is currently represented by Poker Stars along with Phillips, Chino Rheem, Darus Suharto and several others at the 2008 WSOP Main Event final table.
Currently fifth in chips at the final table when it resumes action on November 10th, 2008, Schwartz would be happy to move up the rankings and take the top prize of $9 million plus. He’s certainly got the ability to go the distance. If he wins, he says he’d probably take some time off and visit South America and lay low for a while.
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