Standards and Conduct Committee
The FS+G professional poker league Standards & Conduct Committee's mission is to ensure fair play, good character and integrity in every aspect of the league’s operation.
The committee is comprised of seven voting and one non-voting members. Five of the committee members are cardholders in the league and the remaining two members include the Tournament Director and an independent professional ethics advisor. The Commissioner is the only non-voting member of the committee. All committee members will serve for an initial term of two years.
The professional league Standards and Conduct Committee has the following responsibilities:
- Monitoring the FS+G league member qualification and admission process.
- Collaborating in the development of league tournament rules and other membership policies.
- Overseeing the continued eligibility of players to participate in the league after their initial qualification period.
- Functioning as a league and player resource for establishing and maintaining the credibility and integrity of the league.
- Overseeing player compliance with the league’s Code of Conduct, tournament rules and managing other related policies and procedures.
Andy Bloch
Andy Bloch is recognized as one of the great minds of professional gambling and as an elite tournament poker player. He earned a pair of engineering degrees from MIT, a law degree from Harvard, and participated in and managed the legendary MIT Blackjack Team.
His greatest fame, however, has come through tournament poker. In a career stretching back to 1993 – with interruptions for education, work, and professional blackjack – Bloch has made final tables on three continents and in almost every form of tournament poker. He twice earned over $1 million in a year (2006, 2008).
Andy Bloch is also known for his energetic participation in charity poker events and in his commitment to individual rights and liberties. He is not only a tireless advocate of tournament poker players, but in Bloch v. District of Columbia, 863 A.2d 845 (D.C. 2004), he won reversal of a conviction, on free speech grounds, for crossing a police barrier during an anti-war protest.
Alec Torelli
Chad Brown
Born and raised in New York, Brown’s early poker experience took place in various Italian cafes in the Bronx. Known fondly as “down town” Chad Brown, he set his sights on the West coast to pursue an acting career. While there, he hit the Californian poker circuit and has since built a solid poker career.
With over 3.7 million dollars in lifetime earnings, 93 career cashes and 7 career titles, Brown has more than proven himself as a force to be reckoned with. Brown has been seen at many WSOP and WPT final tables, and made the finals of the NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship, defeating Yosh Nakano, Gabe Kaplan, Brad Booth, Kristy Gazes and Gavin Smith. In 2006, Brown was named Bluff Magazine’s Poker Player of the Year. The well-respected poker professional keeps poker in the family, as he is married to fellow pro Vanessa Rousso.
Eric Baldwin
Originally from Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, Baldwin now resides in Las Vegas, Nevada. Baldwin initially stepped into the poker spotlight by winning the Event 34 No-Limit Hold’em event at the 2009 40thAnnual World Series of Poker. With a bracelet under his belt, he continued to play exceptionally well, finishing out 2009 with a strong 17 total final tables and over $1,517,355 in live tournament earnings.
His list of final tables has grown to 34 all-time, with over 100 cashes and 10 titles. In 2010, Baldwin finished 2ndat the prestigious World Poker Tour Championship earning over $1,000,000. In November of 2010 in front of an ESPN television audience, Baldwin secured the NAPT Bounty Shootout victory for over $150,000. To date, Baldwin has earned over an estimated $4,100,000 in lifetime earnings as well as being named the 2009 Card Player Magazine Player of the Year Award. He has been seen playing on NBC, FSN, ESPN and ESPN2 among others.
Joe Hachem
Born and raised in Lebanon, Hachem and his family moved to settle in Australia in the 1970s. There, Joe built a successful business as a chiropractor in the cosmopolitan city of Melbourne. Already a social poker player, he began to play tournaments at the Crown and success led him to start dreaming of the big time. His shot at the big time came when he was in Las Vegas for the 2005 WSOP. Once in Vegas, friends talked him into entering the biggest tournament in the world. He went on to beat a field of 5,619 players and claim $7,500,000 in prize money – the biggest ever poker tournament cash at that time.
To prove that this win was not merely luck, Hachem has continued to demonstrate his skill by cashing in many world class events including winning the WPT Five Diamond Classic in 2006 for over $2.2 million. With over $11 million in lifetime earnings, Hachem is an internationally respected poker professional. A true ambassador for the game, Hachem can be found on the golf course or spending time with his family when not seated at the poker tables.
Matt Glantz
Matt Savage
Matt Savage was born and raised in San Jose, California and has handled most poker room jobs from selling chips, dealing, floorman, and lead floorman, but is was not until 1998 when he discovered he had a passion for running poker tournaments. Savage stepped in as a substitute tournament director when the current TD went on vacation. Shortly thereafter, he was asked to take the lead tournament position when a nearby casino opened its doors.
Being a seasoned tournament director, Matt was invited to direct the World Series of Poker in 2002, a critical time where he watched the cash prizes in the main event grow from $6,000,000 to more than $25,000,000 in 2004. During his tenure at the WSOP, Savage ascended to become the world’s top poker tournament director.
Matt has currently appeared on more than 400 televised poker shows on ESPN, GSN, Fox Sports, Travel Channel, and numerous others. Matt was also the host of a nationally televised show called “Inside Poker,” and is an actor in the Warner Brothers movie “Lucky You,” in which he worked with actors Drew Barrymore, Robert Duvall, and Eric Bana. Matt currently has the position of Tournament Director at Commerce Casino in Los Angeles, which is the world’s largest poker room and at Bay 101, which is in his hometown of San Jose. Recently Mat has added the title of Executive Tour Director of the World Poker Tour.
Michael McDonald
Stephen Martin
Mr. Martin has a long history of handling ethics and compliance issues as in-house counsel to several major corporations, a former federal and state prosecutor, a corporate consultant and a business professor.
Mr. Martin also served as a federal prosecutor with the United States Attorney’s Office (working for current Attorney General Eric Holder) in Washington, D.C. and as an Assistant Attorney General with the Missouri Attorney General’s Office (working for current Missouri Governor Jay Nixon) in Jefferson City, Missouri.
For the last five years, Mr. Martin has served as a Clinical Professor in the Department of Business Ethics and Legal Studies in the Daniels College of Business at the University of Denver (a department ranked the top ten in the world by the Wall Street Journal for teaching ethics) focusing on ethics/compliance, corporate governance, values-based leadership and corporate sustainability/social responsibility. Mr. Martin also co-founded the Institute for Enterprise Ethics at the University of Denver – Daniels College of Business. Mr. Martin received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Denver, a Juris Doctorate degree from Creighton University, a Master of Laws degree from Georgetown University and a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Denver.