The poker world remembers: 2024 in memoriam

Kok Weng ‘Wayne’ Beh

Malaysia’s Wayne Beh, a frequent participant in tournaments on the Asian Pacific Rim, died unexpectedly in February at the age of 42. Beh won nearly $900,000 in live events on several tours, including the Asian mid-major Poker Dream tour, where he was also a shareholder.

Matthew Bergart

Canadian high-stakes online pro Matthew Bergart was killed in April in Toronto in a home-invasion robbery gone violently wrong. Bergart, 30 was at a friend’s condo when robbers broke in and killed him during a brief fight. Authorities described it as a “wrong place, wrong time” killing. A 17-year-old gang member with a lengthy criminal record was later charged with being one of the parties involved with Bergart’s murder. Bergart’s sole live-tourney score came in 2019 when he made the money in the 2019 WSOP Main Event.

Justin Brown

Indiana’s Justin Brown, a two-time WSOP Circuit ring winner, passed away in February at age 38. Brown succumbed to an aggressive form of cancer, according to his family. He was a frequent participant on poker tours throughout the Midwest, and he earned nearly $400,000 in live-tourney cashes. Brown was a close friend of Circuit superstar Ari Engel, who wrote, “Some of you will know him from the Midwest poker scene. A great guy and such a tragedy. I will miss him tons.”

Justin Brown was a popular face on the Circuit, where he won two rings.

Marty Derbyshire

Poker media veteran Marty Derbyshire died unexpectedly in August after contracting melioidosis, a rare but serious bacterial infection. Derbyshire, 52, who lived in Thailand at the time of his passing, was a veteran of both the live-tournament scene and remote feature reporting, working for multiple outlets over the years.

Mark Dickstein

Veteran mixed-games enthusiast Mark Dickstein passed away in August following a lengthy illness. A long-time friend of many players in the mixed-games tournament world, Dickstein, 66, cashed for over $775,000 in recorded events, including a third-place finish in a $10,000 PLO event won by Lee Watkinson. Dickstein was a well-known investment group founder who pursued his love of poker in later years. He continued to play while battling his final illness, managing to cash in seven events at the 2024 WSOP.

Ryan Estrada

Florida’s Ryan Estrada, a rising star on the online-tournament scene, died tragically in April in a motorcycle accident in southern Florida. Estrada won more than $300,000 in little more tha three years playing live events, including a WSOP Circuit ring victory in 2013 at Seminole Coconut Creek. An online remembrance in Estrada’s honor described him as possessing a “rare combination of talent and ambition, destined for greatness both on the poker table and beyond."

Perry Friedman

Original ‘Tiltboy’ Perry Friedman passed away in February at age 55 after a battle with pancreatic cancer. Friedman was one of a group of poker-playing college friends, including Phil Gordon and Rafe Furst, who progressed from home games to area poker clubs, where they practiced putting their opponents on tilt by any possible means. Friedman, as a software engineer, went on to become the first official employee of Full Tilt Poker, and he also won a WSOP bracelet in 2002 in a $1,500 Limit Omaha Hi-Lo event. He was also famed as a kindhearted jokester who in later years notably dedicated himself to several philanthropic causes.

Perry Friedman: WSOP bracelet winner, 'Tiltboys' member, & former Full Tilt employee.

Phil Hawkins

Former Northern California cardroom owner Phil Hawkins passed away in April at the age of 73. Hawkins was best known as the owner/operator of the Dealers Choice Cardroom in Auburn, California for several years in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s. He later sold the small suburban-Sacramento poker room, which was then renamed the Deuces Wild. Hawkins was a solid player in his own right, playing in occasional seniors and H.O.R.S.E. events around the country as he traveled in his later years, with recorded cashes totaling more than $200,000.

Jason Kapoor

Michigan native Jason Kapoor’s unexpected death in September was  another blow to the poker world. Known as ‘Clozer’ online, Kapoor, who was just 29 when he died, picked up poker in 2019 and relocated to Thailand in late 2022 to further his online career. Though mostly an online pro, he recorded over $150,000 in live-event winnings, mostly in US-based mid-majors but also in Asia over his final years.

Archie Karas

Legendary gambler Archie Karas died in September at the age of 73 after battling multiple ailments in recent years. Karas, a native of Greece whose full name was Anargyros Karabourniotis, was the famed author of 'The Run', where he took a $50 stake and gambled it up to a reported $40 million over the course of several years before losing it all back at the tables. Most of Karas’s winnings came at craps, where he allegedly became so skilled at tossing dice that he shifted the game’s odds in his favor. He was an expert pool player as well, and he played poker against some of the game’s most feared players. Most of that action came in cash games, but he also recorded more than $200,000 in tournament winnings.

Archie Karas made his name after an incredible gambling run in Las Vegas.

Casey Kastle

One of poker’s first true globetrotting players, Casey Kastle, passed away in May at the age of 64. Kastle, a native of Slovenia whose full name was Cyril Kastelic, died after a three-year battle against leukemia and lymphoma. Kastle spent a quarter century traveling the globe to play in poker events, and he won more than $2.2 million in live tourneys while cashing in events in 51 different countries. He was the first player in poker history to reach the 50-country mark in that regard and was honored by the Global Poker Awards for the feat. PokerOrg’s Lee Jones authored a tribute upon Kastle’s passing to commemorate not only Kastle’s skill, but his grace and kindness as well.

Kurt McPhail

The director of the World Poker Tour’s ‘WPT Voyage' cruise packages and the 'WPT at Sea' cardroom, Kurt McPhail, passed away unexpectedly in his home state of Kansas in July from a major myocardial event. McPhail, 54, was an experienced tournament director and a valued business manager who ran the WPT-branded poker cruises as an independent contractor.

Matthew Parry

New York State’s Matthew Parry passed away unexpectedly in June at age 33 while in Las Vegas to play in some of the summer’s major poker festivals. Parry won a bracelet at the 2023 WSOP in a $3,000 PLO 6-Max event, earning what would be a lifetime best $480,122 payday. Just a week before his passing, he won a $2,000 PLO tourney at the Wynn Summer Classic and added a couple of WSOP event cashes in the following days. Parry earned over $1.9 million in recorded live tourneys over more than a decade at the tables.

Esther Rossi

Ohio native and long-time Las Vegas resident Esther Rossi passed away in early April after a lengthy battle against cancer. Rossi was the long-time partner of legendary Poker Hall of Famer Chip Reese, who died in 2008, but Rossi was an accomplished poker player in her own right. After moving to Las Vegas in the late ‘80s, she twice finished as the runner-up in what was then the WSOP’s ladies-only tourney, a seven-card stud offering a format at which she excelled. She made several WSOP final tables and won a major seven-card stud tourney in 1988 at Amarillo Slim’s Super Bowl of Poker.

Dan Sewnig

Online and live poker pro Dan Sewnig passed away unexpectedly in November at the age of 33. Sewnig, a New Jersey resident, was a two-time WSOP Circuit ringwinner and won at least $1.4 million in combined live and online events while playing online under his 'mj23style’ and ‘RedsoxNets5’ screen names. The news of Sewnig’s passing was brought to the poker world’s attention by his good friend Mike ‘Gags30’ Gagliano, who also noted, “Dan was one of the few who truly relished every interaction, both on and off the tables. He will be missed.”

Lori Geer Smith

Veteran Texas player Lori Geer Smith died in November after a battle with cancer. Smith, 65, was a well-known player in the women’s poker community and was a frequent participant in womens, seniors, and open events in the South and in Nevada, where she traveled frequently. LIPS Tour founder Lupe Soto remembered Smith, posting, “Heaven has gained an angel... Lori Geer Smith who is a friend to so many of our poker sisterhood has  passed and we'll miss her deeply... Fly high Lori... seat open."

Matt Snook

Kansas’s Matt Snook passed away in August after losing his battle with cancer and just a month after fulfilling a long-time dream of playing in the WSOP Main Event. Snook was a veteran of several mid-major poker tours, especially in the Midwest. He was famous in another way as well, being a talented country-music singer who was twice a contestant on “The Voice”. Snook cashed for over $86,000 over a decade’s worth of tourney scores, the last of which came in April of 2024

Darren Young

Scotland’s Darren Young, a predominantly online pro, died in May in the Philippines at age 32 under mysterious circumstances. Young had toured several Asian countries before renting an upscale condo in Manila where he could continue playing online poker. His friends and family reported receiving messages from him shortly before his death where he expressed his belief that he had been drugged. Police found his body in his condo, where there was no sign of a struggle, but his valuables were missing. An autopsy declared that Young died of double pneumonia, which his family balked at, since he was an experienced triathlete and in excellent health. No arrests have been made in connection with his death.

PokerOrg expresses its heartfelt condolences to all those who lost friends and family in the poker world throughout 2024.