Barry Greenstein ranks among poker’s most venerable cash-game players. He’s anted up for some of the biggest games in history, including the Big Game, the Andy Beal Game and the Larry Flynt Game. Though it’s well known that the mathematically astute Greenstein worked in Silicon Valley’s technology sector, what’s less known is that his job with the software company Symantec didn’t pay nearly enough to suit him. He isn’t a guy who struck it rich in tech – he struck it rich in poker and earned more money playing cards than he did at his day job. These days Greenstein can usually be found wherever the action is biggest and the opportunities are most rife, but, as he reveals in this candid interview, live cash-game poker is not exactly bursting with the big-money opportunities that once made it so alluring...

INSIDE POKER: What is the state of the Big Game at the Bellagio these days?

BARRY GREENSTEIN: Things are real fractured.