David "gaucho2121" Paredes

A player who can easily move from the cash game tables to the tournament arena, David Paredes has a long history of success even before he took up the game of poker.

Born in 1980 and now residing in Brookline, Massachusetts, David’s original passion wasn’t poker, but chess. “I was lucky that my elementary school was one of the best schools in the country for chess,” David stated in a 2010 interview with PokerCurious.com. “As a kid, I got to travel all around the country for tournaments. The studying, the extended periods of concentration, and the competition are all similar skills that you need to be successful in poker.”

Following graduation from high school, David graduated from Harvard in 2002 and then moved onto law school. He put himself through his higher education by picking up poker in 2004, where the cash games would sometimes allow Paredes to earn six figures a month. Balancing his studies and the game, David would graduate from law school and move onto working in a hedge fund, but his attention continued to be balanced between work and poker.

Between 2004 and 2007, David began to enter online poker tournaments, where he would make his first impact. Using the name “gaucho2121,” Paredes earned his first online tournament cash on the virtual felt of Full Tilt Poker in 2007, winning $3596 for his 42nd place finish in a $1000 NLHE event. He would also take part in satellite events, sending him to tournaments around the world.

David’s first live tournament cash came at one of those satellite opportunities, the 2007 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure. Battling through the 937 player field, Paredes would depart the tournament in 78th place for a $14,128 payday. David would continue to work on his game, both online and live, and 2010 would be when he would make a significant impact.

At the North American Poker Tour event in Las Vegas in 2010, David would make the final table of the $5,000 NLHE Championship Event. Out of the 872 player field, Paredes would eventually finish in fifth place for his largest cash to date of $184,816. Over the next few months, David would earn cashes on all the major tours – the European Poker Tour, the World Series of Poker and the World Poker Tour – on his way to taking down almost $300,000 in tournament earnings for 2010.

For his tournament poker career, David has solid earnings that demonstrate a major poker championship may be just around the corner. He has made four final tables (all since 2009) and cashed in twelve events. His live tournament earnings as of July 2011 are $513,307; added with his online tournament earnings of $358,686, Paredes has earned $871,993 since he began playing tournaments in 2004. It is also likely that David has made at least that amount in cash game play over his career.

When asked what the future holds for him in the game of poker, David seems to have a defined course. “In the immediate future, my goals are to continue to do well in cash games, learn PLO really well, save up some money, and continue to get better as an overall player,” Paredes said in the PokerCurious interview. “If tournament success happens as well, that would be nice, but getting good at tournaments is not my focus right now. I think in the long-term I will play poker for fun and for social purposes, as I love the game and I love to play.”