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There are a lot of ways to make a living after a spinal cord injury and Garrett Jason Greer may have one of the coolest professions any quadriplegic has landed post-injury – a professional poker player, and since 2012, he’s won millions of dollars.
Also a restaurant owner, Garrett is a lifelong California boy who believes he was destined for the game. Long before his spinal cord injury, he was already a diehard poker player. Driven and consciously-aware, read on for the story of Garrett Greer.
Why He’s Fearless
Growing up Hemet, California, Garrett was your typical young man dreaming of a bigger life, and he finally got his opportunity after graduating from high school, enrolling at UCLA. But he wasn’t sure how he was going to afford tuition. Fortunately, when he started college it was also when the big poker boom was happening online.
After discovering poker through an old high school buddy, he returned to college and began to study the mathematics and strategy of the game, and he was hooked. And he began to win right away, both online and at casinos near home. He began to win almost $7,000 a week, which he would use towards tuition. He was working towards a degree in sociology, with plans to go to law school.
That is exactly what he was planning on doing, scoring a 163 on the law school entrance exam. But Garrett had another love, the movie industry. He left poker to produce a short film called Hours Before in 2010 with some of his winnings, and he was thrilled about his future in the business, but in March, just one day after his first day as a paid producer, he broke his neck in a swimming pool accident.
Waking up a quadriplegic, Garrett knew he needed to refine his career, and soon found himself returning to poker. Almost a year later he began playing poker again online, and began to win just like before. By the end of 2011, Garrett even made his first appearance in-person playing at the Hustler casino, winning $18,000.
By 2013, the poker world began to notice Garrett when he finished seventh at the World Poker Tour L.A. Poker Classic Main Event, winning $161,300. And in March 2014, he finished six in the Bay 101 Shooting Star tournament and won a cool $174,080. He won another $230,487 later in 2014 when he finished 32nd place in the World Series of Poker main event. And at the $10,400 No-Limit Hold’em World Poker Tour in December 2014, he won a whopping $1,169,683
In April and June of 2016, he had two second-place finishes. One was for $458,722 and the other was at the Bellagio Casino in Las Vegas. He was playing in the $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em Millionaire Maker 1st & 2nd $1 Million GTD, winning $1,000,000 in a very tight game. “It was a life-changing amount,” he says.
What’s Next?
In 2017 and beyond, he has continued to make hundreds of thousands of dollars in the professional poker world. In 2018, one of his biggest wins was at No-Limit tournament, where he won $70,000 and in December 2021, he won $112,000 in a similar tournament at the Wynn Winter Classic.
Another interesting thing about Garrett is his diet change to veganism. Garrett became a vegan after noticing the benefits of eating fruits and vegetables on his digestive system. He decided to start his own vegan restaurant in 2019 in Fountain, California. The restaurant is called The Black Bean. They serve earth conscious, reasonably priced, guilt-free food. “Nothing is more satisfying than giving people healthy, delicious food.”
Balancing his earth conscious endeavors with poker is what makes Garrett Greer all that more interesting. We can’t wait to see what he’s up to next.
ideas@spinalpedia.com
