Ihsan Farha, better known as Sam Farha, is a professional poker player and gambler. He has won two World Series of Poker bracelets and did finish second in the WSOP.main event. His tournament earnings to date are over two million dollars and climbing, but his real income is from high stakes cash poker games that he plays in routinely.

Farha came to the states from Lebanon when he was still in his teens. He first lived in Wichita, KS, and he attended the University of Kansas where he graduated with a degree in business administration. In his youth he was a superb game player, so poker was a natural step for him. In 1990, in Houston Texas he played poker for the first time and won several thousand dollars. He quit his job at that time and has been a professional poker player ever since.

Sam's claim to fame is he never is dealt a hand that he does not like. When you see him on TV in High Stakes Poker, you see him play some terrible starting hands and turn them into winners. If the pot odds are right, he is not afraid to make the call. In one memorable High Stakes hand he called a $180 thousand dollar bet with a pair of kings when he had to be pretty sure that Barry Greenstein, the better had a pair of aces. He caught the third king and the legend of Farha continued. His TV demeanor is engaging, but the other players are a little nervous when he plays a hand, as they are never quite sure as to what he is holding or betting. He keeps an unlit cigarette in his mouth most of the time and if he gets a bad beat he changes the cigarette.

Farha seems to be well liked by the other professionals and his play is respected by most of them. If Bogart were still alive, he could play Farha in a movie with his eyes closed. He carries within himself a love of life and a fearless attack always sense of the way to play the game. He is dangerous and cunning and yet he appears to be a very likeable sort of fellow. He can stand to be the butt of a joke, but he is capable of giving as good as he gets. You hear many negative comments about some of the TV poker players, but few if any about Sam Farha.

His style of play is very disconcerting because he will draw to outrages starting hands and bluff like he has the holy city. On the other hand he will sand bag a really good hand and lull a player into the trap. His play is very hard to read and makes for many a breathless call from his opponents. The poker world has its share of nuts and characters, but Farha is in a class by himself. He also seems to play with a certain amount of class and respect for his fellow players. This attribute is not always present in the modern professional poker player. His charm and smile may be just a beguiling trait for TV but it does seem genuine when compared with the attitude of some of the other name stars.

As you can see this article has a very favorable opinion of Farha, but we may not be alone in our analysis as the players he plays against seem to have a similar opinion. They know he is a wild and unpredictable player, but they respect his play and try as they might, they find reading him very difficult. A player who is hard to read has a serious advantage when playing poker and Farha has this characteristic in spades. His opponents seem to call him with baited breath.

They also seem to like to play with this poker star from Beirut, Lebanon. He seems to have come to America and like many other people that have come here found his niche in the American scene. He sure enlivens the US poker world with his presence, his smile and his famous unlit cigarette.

Personal Quote

"All my life I have loved games, especially cards. I was great in cards. All my family loved cards. When I was young, maybe five years old, I would sit with my parents as they played. "But I never played poker until 1988 or 1989. It was New Year's Eve and it is a tradition back home, in Lebanon to play cards then, to see how your luck is going to be. One of my friends wanted to try poker and I had never played poker. But my friend taught me how to play the game and I enjoyed it. I liked it."